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Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

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Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#401

Post by sokoloff »

pacija wrote: post #373
dijit wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store? No. Sony PlayStation is almost identical to the Apple App Store in that there’s only 1 way to get your software working on retail units. In fact it’s a lot worse in many ways, you need two specific types of hardware to even develop software- Sony is quite old school and draconian when it comes to testing, validation and communication. At U…

I buy my Sony PlayStation games on physical media in six brick and mortar stores owned by three different brands in Belgrade, Serbia. There are also a few online retailers who will send you the disc and you pay the delivery guy with cash. Sometimes I find a game at half the price at one store as compared to the others. I bought PS4 game three years ago in Oslo, Norway, and two years ago in Nicosia, Cyprus, both in di…

How many ISPs provide transit for the bits from Apple’s app store? Sony has a bottleneck upstream of your retail purchase that’s analogous to Apple’s App Store bottleneck.

The only thing I see that’s slightly different in your example above is the ability to resell the game once you’re done with it.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#402

Post by helloiloveyou23 »

f6v wrote: post #354
summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

> The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

I don't think that is correct unless you have a very narrow "market" in mind. Both Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and PC vendors sell gaming hardware. And both Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Steam own stores that sell video games. Sure, Nintendo's hardware and software has some distinguishing features. But, they still all compete for gamers attention and money.

As a case in point, it's clear that Nintendo themselves think they are competing with Microsoft, Sony, and the PC space. They pay tons of money to game developers in order for their games to not show up on Xbox, PS, and PC. That would make no sense unless there was some actual competition. I could mention Hades and Monter Hunter Rise as two recent examples where Nintendo paid money to devs in exchange for exclusivity.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#403

Post by hortense »

cartoonworld wrote: post #169
cartoonworld wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox works fine on iOS

Question to downvotes: I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?

In general, WebKit has more bugs and fewer features than gecko.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#404

Post by hnlmorg »

f6v wrote: post #354
summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

> The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

> I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

Nintendo might be a running joke amongst hardcore gamers but ironically they're the most successful console manufacturer out there.

The Switch is going from strength to strength and I'd estimate it will outsell the Playstation 4 before Nintendo retire it (it's been outselling the PS4 since 2019 already but that's to be expected given the expectation of the PS5). And from the same trial that bought us this submission we've seen Microsoft admit that they've never made a profit on the Xbox. Let's also not forget that games on the Switch are typically more expensive than the same game on other platforms. And that's without even touching the topic of Nintendo's 1st party games -- they make an absolute killing on their IP. Animal Crossing, for example, was seen by many as the unofficial game of the 2020 lockdown.

I predict Nintendo's market position will only get stronger too. With many Xbox fans giving up on buying new consoles because they're basically just PCs at this point. So switching to PCs that can be upgraded over time and still have access to Xbox content. Plus the struggles Sony have had just shipping their latest consoles and many gamers there saying they might just stick with the PS4. Yet Nintendo have calved out their own corner of the market that sits between the ultra competitive hardcore market and casual gamers who want more than crappy mobile apps. And it's a segment that's increasing in size too.

It'll be interesting to see how Valves offering does. I can't see it competing with the Switch directly but it might take more market share away from Sony and Microsoft given Valves new portable offers the capability of desktop gaming on the move.

So anyway, back to your point. You might scoff but actually Nintendo are in a far more stable and successful position than Sony and Microsoft (with regards to consoles).

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#405

Post by sokoloff »

xyzzyz wrote: post #307
Renaud wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very ra…

There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.

Ironic for this debate to be happening here (publicly indexed, searchable)

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#406

Post by _cs2017_ »

rewq4321 wrote: post #347
summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

The evidence of collusion between Apple and Google coming out of the Epic case is amazing to me. I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it: https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348... > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showe…

While it makes an awesome headline for a tabloid or HackerNews, it's not necessarily imporant. See comments on Reddit that provide some thoughts on that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...

Obviously, I don't claim these two comments are correct. I do claim, however, that people are better served by not quoting random statements from a lawsuit without understanding either the context or the applicable law. Especially when only one side in the lawsuit is quoted from.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#407

Post by sokoloff »

dalbasal wrote: post #393
arcturus17 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP is saying naturally high margins because it is a pure software play with close-to-zero marginal distribution cost and massive scale. We don’t know if Bing’s profitable but GP is merely saying that with the circumstances above it is an interesting market for Microsoft to pursue.

Perhaps, but I think it's marginal in practice. Whether MSFT makes an internally accounted 10% margin or 10% loss on their $8bn in revenue, Apple collect >$8bn which is entirely profit. Cooperating and accepting a slice of Google's monopoly profits is far more profitable that competing would be, in all but the most bullish scenarios. IE, MSFT would need to be outright challenging Google's 1st place position in search…

> by [Apple] doing nothing, spending nothing, investing nothing and taking no risks.

Apple did none of those things with respect to launching a search engine. Apple did all of those things with respect to building an audience of daily engaged (often affluent) users. That’s the investment Apple made to earn the position to cash Google’s check.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#408

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

elric wrote: post #387
Santosh83 wrote: post #12

Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is. True decentralization is impossible without dr…

Back when I was a young software engineer, I worked for a large consulting company which frequently outsourced people to my country's government(s). As a consequence, I gained some insights into government software projects. And it's as bad as you'd expect it to be, or worse. $gov pays 600eur/day for software developers (which they could hire for less than a third of the price). The pimps renting out these developers…

As Thomas Sowell has put it:

„Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no price for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.“

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#409

Post by getlawgdon »

solarkraft wrote: post #223
bushbaba wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s likely the payoff is also to prevent apple from building its own search engine to compete. As googles payoff is so lucrative

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

DDG search has been much better for me than google and has been for a few years. Google search has become a complete disaster. I'm curious about what you mean by DDG being so much worse.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#410

Post by Joeri »

summerlight wrote: post #332

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thank…

Microsoft tried and failed to make a third alternative and force competition, spending billions to make it happen. As they found out, app makers don’t want to build for yet another platform. It doesn’t matter whether you make an awesome mobile OS, you’ll never get the app makers to support you enough to convince the users, and without the users you cannot convince the app makers.

Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores.

For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.

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