“App Store Monopoly” Discussion

It looks like Sony is in the chopping block now (not from epic) Sony faces lawsuit over alleged “monopoly pricing” of PlayStation downloads | Ars Technica

Interestingly the suit specifically tries to argue that:

"physical games are not substitutes for digital games"

Anyone agree?

I mean. I think they obviously are different given you can resell a physical game, and there’s no chance of your access/ownership being revoked, unless the game is blocked from being playable.

But I think it is shocking that physical games still cost less to this day. Like, the digital game should clearly cost less. No ability to resell. No middle man fees. No physical manufacturing or distribution. It’s very fucked.

I buy everything digitally because I don’t want to faff with discs, and my backlog is so big that I nearly never buy at launch so can usually wait for a sale. Plus, game pass means I don’t have to buy much anyway ofc. But yeah, I really don’t get what the hold up in lowering costs is.

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It’s easy:

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🥲

Yeah fair.

Do we think they’re (Xbox/PS) still locked into some sort of agreement not to undercut physical partners? I assume pretty strongly that that was the case a while ago before digital became the norm.

I have no idea what percentage of digital vs physical sales are these days but imagine digital is in the lead for modern consoles so maybe console makers don’t even have an incentive to undercut as they’re already winning on that front?

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I also have a huge backlog and just buy in PSN sales. Some of the prices are seriously cheap. I’m not sure about brand new, but there’s definitely value to be found on PSN.

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Yeah I get incredible value in sales too.

My problem is that the RRP is what, £59.99 often now. In my experience, most of those games cost £49.99 from day one in Game but they’re £59.99 on the Xbox store until a sale comes along.

And in Game, the price will go down month by month as the game gets older. On the Xbox store, I feel that process takes years longer. Sure, an old game will be on sale so often that you can probably just wait a few weeks/months but I don’t feel that should be necessary.

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Fair enough. TBH if I was buying new games I’d only buy physical so that I could resell after.

When it’s £10 or £20 the convenience of digital wins out.

BTW, books are the the same. New books are regularly cheaper to buy phyically than on Kindle. But as time goes on the ebooks do get to bargain prices.

Just saw this on BBC. This Epic/Apple row is making people lose their mind

Why would consumers be compensated? What about the other platforms with 30% fees? Why not wait until the Epic battle is over?

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JFC. Who are these idiots?

Even if this goes completely wrong for Apple, and they’re forced to drop their commission to 2% across all payment mechanisms, I promise you that in app purchases won’t suddenly get 28% cheaper.

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Why’s everyone so angry about this?

Surely it’s right to test this in English law?

This is what I mean by Apple winning but still losing. There’s a cost to enduring the constant barrage of “antitrust” and “monopoly” news.

Agreed. But I can’t see them being forced to reduce their rate.

The 30% commission is an industry wide practice, yet everyone points at Apple as if they invented it and used their App Store profits to kill puppies and kittens.

The Epic v Apple trial will/has/is testing this in courts not just in the US and UK but everywhere they can raise it. So people should just sit it out and see how it plays out instead of trying to milk it and get their names into the newspapers.

Finally, this hasn’t come about because anybody cares about the end user. It’s pure greed from Epic, and now from everyone else trying to milk it. If my money is taken by someone I’d rather it be Tim Apple than China or whatever

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Should we also test that every retailer both physical and online takes a margin?

It is just a law firm jumping on a bandwagon for some publicity.

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Why stop there! I’m a bit peeved my bank takes a small cut too. It’s their fault Pringles keep getting more and more expensive.

You’re living in a fallacy if you believe for one second that things will actually become cheaper if these fees disappeared. Why would they lower prices when they already know we’re willing to pay the current price, you’d just reap the profits.

We’ve had slightly unrelated test cases in this regard with currency fluctuations. After the brexit vote, Apple moved the pricing tiers up for developers here, so the income developers were making in their currency wasn’t impacted by the fall of ours. How many U.K. developers do you think moved their app down a price tier to where it was originally? From the ones I kept tabs on; none.

I’d be a little less hostile towards these developers if they were being genuine and honest in action, instead of trying to wrap themselves in a cape and convince us they’re the hero.

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It’s not quite the same, though, as one reason it’s cheaper to buy physical books than digital is because VAT applies on the latter, while the former is zero-rated.

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Interesting example. Banking fees are highly regulated so that cut that peeves you off doesn’t get out of hand.

Prices may not go down, but who knows what new apps and services we would get that just aren’t viable with a 30% cut (assuming that Apple would even allow them!).

I’d even just take the improved experience from more apps using in App purchase for sign up and consumables as it wouldn’t be probitive to their cost economics.

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Wow didn’t know this. Feels odd - will go have a look at the supposed rationale.

Pretty sure that was said tongue-in-cheek.

Pretty irrelevant when it is actually 15% for almost all developers - unless we are playing historical whatifery.

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Yep. For some reason ebooks are classified as software :man_shrugging:

@Alexxxxx FYI