It’s not the same model though, is it? I can buy XBox, PS an Nintendo games in a shit ton of physical or digital stores. So there are different channels. There is no equivalent on iOS. If you don’t want to publish in the app store, no one will be able to install your app (developers with own certs and enterprise customers with mdm excluded).
That would be nice, sure. I am just saying, it still wouldn’t give them a significantly better standing over Valve, in my eyes. Valve is currently kinda the Linux Gaming Savior. Hard to beat that unless they also start actively (!) doing something.
Missing vehicle combat is one of the two points I listed, so “it doesn’t need to be that big because there are no vehicles” is a bad reason.
I don’t want to imply that the game called “Tribes 3” will be bad. I just think it should not be called “Tribes 3” when it is not an evolution of Tribes 2 but “only” a small subset with a different focus. “Epic scale” was one of the key elements of Tribes 1 and 2.