Microsoft says loosened App Store gaming rules still make for a 'bad experience'
Microsoft on Friday criticized recent changes to Apple's App Store that loosened restrictions for cloud gaming apps, stating that it still remains a "bad experience."
Credit: Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider
Earlier in the day, Apple outlined a number of changes that it's making to the App Store to loosen restrictions for cloud-based gaming services. That includes allowing "catalog" apps with the caveat that individual games must still have separate App Store listings.
While the rules allow cloud-based platforms to exist, Microsoft -- creator of the xCloud gaming platform -- believes that they're still too stringent to make the experience convenient for gamers.
"This remains a bad experience for customers. Gamers want to jump directly into a game from their curated catalog within one app just like they do with movies or songs, and not be forced to download over 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud," Microsoft wrote in a statement to CNET.
Microsoft added that it's "committed to putting gamers at the center of everything we do, and providing a great experience is core to that mission."
Google and Nvidia, makers of the Stadia and GeForce Now cloud gaming platforms, both declined to comment to media outlets.
Apple's exact guidelines allow companies to submit "catalog" apps that can help users sign up for a subscription service and find individual game listings on the App Store. As mentioned earlier, each individual game must be submitted to the App Store separately and have their own listing, though streaming clients are now acceptable. The catalog app itself, as well as games, must also comply with Apple's guidelines regarding updates, in-app purchases, and Sign in with Apple.
Microsoft has criticized Apple's App Store rules in the past. In August, the xCloud maker accused Apple of treating gaming apps unfairly compared to music or movie platforms.
Previously, Apple completely barred cloud gaming services from the App Store with a requirement that "each game must be downloaded directly from the App Store." Apple's own Apple Arcade, despite being a subscription-based service, adheres to that rule with individual game listings.
Credit: Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider
Earlier in the day, Apple outlined a number of changes that it's making to the App Store to loosen restrictions for cloud-based gaming services. That includes allowing "catalog" apps with the caveat that individual games must still have separate App Store listings.
While the rules allow cloud-based platforms to exist, Microsoft -- creator of the xCloud gaming platform -- believes that they're still too stringent to make the experience convenient for gamers.
"This remains a bad experience for customers. Gamers want to jump directly into a game from their curated catalog within one app just like they do with movies or songs, and not be forced to download over 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud," Microsoft wrote in a statement to CNET.
Microsoft added that it's "committed to putting gamers at the center of everything we do, and providing a great experience is core to that mission."
Google and Nvidia, makers of the Stadia and GeForce Now cloud gaming platforms, both declined to comment to media outlets.
Apple's exact guidelines allow companies to submit "catalog" apps that can help users sign up for a subscription service and find individual game listings on the App Store. As mentioned earlier, each individual game must be submitted to the App Store separately and have their own listing, though streaming clients are now acceptable. The catalog app itself, as well as games, must also comply with Apple's guidelines regarding updates, in-app purchases, and Sign in with Apple.
Microsoft has criticized Apple's App Store rules in the past. In August, the xCloud maker accused Apple of treating gaming apps unfairly compared to music or movie platforms.
Previously, Apple completely barred cloud gaming services from the App Store with a requirement that "each game must be downloaded directly from the App Store." Apple's own Apple Arcade, despite being a subscription-based service, adheres to that rule with individual game listings.
Comments
As much as I am a fan of Apple's ecosystem and 'walled garden', I struggle to see the risk of streaming game platforms. I'm not much of a gamer, but I would rather have one app that can stream tons of games, than have to download each game one by one and delete them to make room for more. Am I getting the two models right?
I heard xCloud get compared to Netflix like this: They are both zero footprint downward streams with upward controls. The play/pause/skip function is just replaced by left/right/jump/shoot etc. I honestly think Apple isn't allowing it simply because they can't figure out a way to monetize it.
MS made xCloud due to complaints from xBox users having a bad experience because they want to play hundreds of games at once but don’t want to download hundreds of games?
Any gamers on this forum?
Any of you playing through 100s of games at the moment?
or are you playing through maybe 1 or 3-4.
apple says to microsoft - hey don’t have one bit of floorspace, have hundreds. hey don’t have one brand in the store, have heaps of leading brands.
apple says, hey don’t just limit your service and income to existing xBox users - target people on iOS who aren’t and let’s make it easy for them by offering sign in with apple.
microsoft is complaining?
Microsoft doesn't want ANY requirements, especially with regard to payments. Microsoft wants to control the entire user experience. I can't honestly say that Microsoft would violate all 500 rules, but based on a quick sampling I think Microsoft would violate about 250.
Microsoft already controls the entire user experience on XBOX. Why do you think Microsoft should get complete control over someone else's operating system? How is that fair?
MS, perhaps before you start poking others you should consider that crap you have put out there. Forget the fact that you have tried and failed with your own devices, browsers, and online stores...
These apps are simply that, apps. Microsoft isn't asking for an xCloud app screen between the widgets view and the first home screen. They're not asking for a control center toggle to launch xCloud baked into iOS 14. They're asking to be able to put one app into the store, that allows you to stream Halo, Gears of War, and other games without downloading an app for every game. How do you get that Microsoft and Google demand "full control" when they want to put xCloud and Stadia into the App Store without 4038934893 different apps for each game?
These apps aren't even doing anything special, they don't require deep iOS integration to work. They render a video, and have inputs for users. Netflix, but with more options than just fast forward and play/pause. Did you two scream and cry about Netflix when it came to the App Store? No, you didn't, because Netflix wasn't constantly being crapped on by Apple.
Do you cry that Netflix doesn't pay Apple "their share" anymore now that Netflix doesn't allow subscriptions through the App Store? Will you demand that Apple kick Netflix out of the App Store now?
Also, get over yourself. xCloud doesn't need iOS to succeed. This isn't a new service like Stadia or GeForce Now trying to get off the ground, establish itself and needs the iOS army of premium app buyers and service subscribers we are talking about. Instead, there are 90 million XBox Live customers and 10 million Game Pass customers already. While the former is $10 a month and is multiplatform, the latter is not only $15 a month but currently requires an XBox One. How many of these are going to pass up xCloud because it isn't on iOS? Practically none. More than half of them already have an Android phone or tablet lying around already, and nearly all the rest are asking Siri "where can I buy a Pixel 4A" and/or searching Safari for "what is the cheapest Samsung tablet" as we speak.
The same is going to be true when Amazon launches the cloud portion of their Prime gaming service next year: everyone who doesn't have an Android phone or tablet already will just get a Kindle. Steam is also working on a cloud gaming service and their 90-100 million users will either already have an Android device or will get one quickly, easily and cheaply. So anyone who thinks that not being on iOS is going to do any real harm to xCloud or cloud gaming in general doesn't know a thing about AAA console and PC gaming, which is precisely the market that cloud gaming is aimed at.
MS is complaining about Apple bad experiences in gaming are valid, considering what you are seeing in Apple Arcade and Apple TV as a gaming console.
MS may not have a mobile platform today, but they have one of the largest gaming platforms (maybe the largest) in the world, and for some reason, you criticize them for trying to bring it to us, Apple customers. Don't you think that you criticize blame Apple for the terrible gaming experiences we have, specially when compared to MS?
They would no more be "for free" than Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ are. Or for that matter, than Apple TV+ and Apple Music are on non-Apple hardware. They are subscription services. Apple would get a 30% cut of every 60% AAA game bought on xCloud from an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV as well as a 30% cut of every $15 per month subscription. So whatever motive Apple has for doing this, it isn't financial. And the motive that Microsoft has for offering this isn't financial either because video games are a very tiny part of their $1.5 trillion market cap.
This is what is really going on. Microsoft - plus Google, Nvidia and Amazon (who will offer cloud gaming next year) - do not make much money off consumer hardware but make a ton off cloud software, services, platforms and hardware. Apple and PlayStation's Sony, meanwhile, rely primarily on consumer hardware (plus the software and services purchased for their hardware). So it is in the interests of the major cloud companies to promote the idea that you should replace expensive hardware with the combination of cheap interchangeable commodity hardware and cloud services. While the cloud services would be plenty expensive, they would be more versatile and capable than what is possible with the expensive hardware alone.
Again, xCloud isn't planned to be a massive revenue driver for Microsoft. Redmond has a market cap of $1.5 trillion. Nintendo by contrast had a market cap of just $15 billion a few years ago, and Nintendo makes more money off video games on their worst day than Microsoft does on their best. Which is why of the first things that Nadella did when he became CEO was to significantly reduce the amount of money Ballmer was wasting on the video game division. Instead, the purpose of xCloud is to be a commercial to enterprises, governments and consumers (but mostly the first two) of the capability of cloud services. The pitch: "if we can use a $15 a month service to replace the 4K graphics and latency handling capability of a $5000 gaming rig, then running your engineering software in the cloud and allowing your designers to access from wherever they are in the world using any device they want instead of requiring them to run it onsite on a fully loaded Mac Pro that you will have to upgrade or replace every 3 years will be easy."
Quite naturally, it isn't in the interests of Apple to let its iPhones and iPads be "exhibit A" for the Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Nvidia etc. crowd's "use cloud services to replace your expensive hardware" campaign because high-margin hardware is Apple's entire business. And specific to Microsoft, consider the Ballmer to Nadella transition. Ballmer started the Surface line and bought Nokia because his goal was to compete directly against Apple in hardware. When that failed, Microsoft hired a new CEO with the goal of competing with Google and Amazon instead. While that move was good for Apple in the short term, in the long term it actually would have been better to keep Ballmer around for another 10 years trying - and failing - to make iPhone/iPad/MacBook hybrids running Windows 8.
Instead the result was having a company in Microsoft that was even better situated than Amazon and especially Google in moving the tech world from its hardware-centric present to a cloud-based post hardware future. Now post-hardware does not mean no hardware. Hardware will still exist obviously ... but it will be cheap interchangeable stuff designed primarily to get you to the cloud. (Or more accurately the edge, which is what Nvidia is heavily investing in. They are trying to buy ARM because they want to create ARM-based hardware to run their edge computing hardware that will be the middle-man between end user devices and the major cloud services like Azure, AWS and GCP.) With all the processing offloaded to the cloud, Apple Silicon on end user devices will be ... using sledgehammers to crush gnats. Even the operating system model would be passe, because current general purpose operating systems waste tons of processing power - and energy - sitting around being available for tasks that you might do once an hour/day/year/never. Next generation operating systems that dynamically scale themselves up and down as needed - the way that *-as-a-service does in the cloud - are what the cutting edge research is into now. This is what Nadella and Microsoft mean when they state that they are already preparing for a post-Windows world, as Windows is just another general purpose OS that will become outdated in the next computing era. If you thought it meant that Microsoft had resigned itself to being inevitably usurped by Apple Silicon, you had better think again.