The Epic v Google lawsuit is bringing to light a lot of interesting tidbits of info, so I think it's just that. It's an interesting tidbit, but not really relevant to much outside the trial. That said, I do like seeing this kind of info shared, as it gives us a peek behind the curtain of these megacorps' operations.
One school of thoughts is companies go through eras of profiting from inflation and eras of profiting from M&As. Guess an uptick in M&A would suggest they're no longer increasing profits from inflation?
Abso-fucking-lutely not. That’ll be the death of epic and unreal engine as we know it if it ever happened. And why team up with Google if you know they’ll abandon it in 2-3 years?
Pretty much the majority of (large) single player games in development or recently released have been unreal properties. It’s by far the best game engine for its use cases
Unreal or Unity, and one of those recently became not really an option.
I think it’s in everyone’s interest to have more variety in engine choice, but that just leads to everyone only being familiar with their proprietary engine implementation.
Godot is trying to break in, and seems to be picking up some steam though
Yes, comical that Valve secured exlusivity of an already-on-sale third-party game to try to drive support of their nascent digital store more than a decade before Epic did it and you fanboys are all just okay with it because you weren’t there.
You all try to pretend that Epic invented this sort of exclusivity on PC, but it’s been a thing for years and years before they even opened their store. But go on and bury your head in the sand even further about it, I’m sure GabeN will be your bff if you do it hard enough!
If you think losing Unreal is good for developers and the gaming industry you’re absolutely retarded. Your rant about the storefront stuff is just weird. I don’t like the epic games store either, but I guess that’s not enough for a dedicated Steam fanboy like you. What a sad neck beard you are.
Google hardware actually gives you the most freedom, no other Android phone allows you to install a custom operating system, relock the bootloader and use Android Verified Boot, which is a fundamental part of the Android security model, with a custom signing key defined by the custom OS. It also includes the Titan M2 secure element which gives you great security through features like Android StrongBox, the Weaver API and it even has Insider Attack Resistance meaning Google, even if they get a court order to do so, can’t comprise the Titan M. Firmware can only be loaded to the chip after proper user authentication. Yes, it’s a little ironic, but Google hardware gives you the most freedom over your device.
I wouldn’t trust shit either of these two companies argues.
This is probably technically correct, but in some really constructed way. And the reply by the Google lawyers will again be technically correct, but again be utter horseshit in some legal manner.
Suffice to say, people spend a lot on mobile apps. A lot.
Also, the thing they’re spending money on is the hard work of other companies, not Google’s. The profit margins are not tied directly to a Google product; the Play Store generates very little of its revenue in-and-of-itself (Play Pass is the only thing I can think of).
The Play Store certainly isn’t cheap to maintain but it pales in comparison to the amount developers collectively have to spend to create/maintain their apps. The Play Store’s profit margin is obviously going to be high, because Google doesn’t have to spend much to get a cut of the revenue from other companies that have spent quite a lot.
And that’s sort of to be expected with any digital store front that manages in app payments. The question is how much of that profit goes back into the Play Store, or Android development, or into other Google products, and how much does Google eat into the profit margins of those other companies while preventing them from managing payments themselves.
the play store, like other download stores, provides discoverability, trust, and all the infrastructure to distribute and automatically update your software products.
this is not a worthless service, otherwise publishers wouldn’t have flocked to Steam on Windows in the late ‘00s/early ‘10s. only the very biggest ones like EA and Ubisoft felt like they could make more money by rolling their own.
this doesn’t justify using anticompetitive practices to maintain your market position, but there is real value being provided there.
I would say now do the Google Play Gift card scam where buyers cannot redeem the cards in Google’s automated systems, and the buyer is not allowed to return the card either so the money is kept by Google forever…
You can still buy 100% of the games on gamepass. I don’t see Microsoft stopping individual sales as I’d expect that action to draw the attention of regulators
Considering Microsoft is supposedly releasing a new revision of the Xbox Series X and S next year without disc drives, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Given the direction the industry is moving, I wouldn’t be surprised if the PS6 and whatever Microsoft calls the next Xbox are all digital only.
I'm a little fuzzy as to why the first-sale doctrine exists for physical goods but not for digital goods. It seems to me that any reasonable economic rationale should affect either both or neither.
The Series S and Game Pass have shown that people like discounts; so either competing console is going to run into issues attracting customers if they never offer them in any form. That’s currently an issue for the Nintendo eShop.
It’s this or buying nothing. I play most games for a few hours to see what they’re like and then ditch them. I love the current system as it is kinda making me feel like I’m part of gaming still while mostly being too tired to play. Starfield is the first game in years I’ve spent more than 5 hours on (dozens by now) in years. Never would’ve played it without gamepass.
I haven’t used a disc in a long time. Even before I got my series s most everything I played was gamepass or a digital purchase. When used physical games barely cost less than a new game, why bother?
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