I understand where you want to come from and how to balance it all. But honestly, who forced the game console makers to sell at a loss (excluding Nintendo, they don’t)? If tomorrow Ford and Toyota decided on their own accord to start losing money for each car sold as a business strategy, then what, we should feel sorry about it and allow them to gouge the third party aftermarket manufacturers for each piece they sell? That premise doesn’t make sense for me really... also the consumer is the one paying the upfront cause of said console or device, the fee is for the developers themselves.
They're not "losing money" on the consoles as such, they're subsidising the cost to the consumer by shifting revenue from the hardware, to the software. The effect of this subsidy, however, is to increase developer sales, by putting more money in the consumer's pockets, and in video games units sold, and popularity / critical mass is arguably the most important metric.
Games consoles
do actually have a cellphone equivalent - but it's not Apple's sales model, it's the carrier-subsidised phone sales model.
The carrier sells discounted phones, and then makes it up again by charging more for the talk / data plans. If you pay full price for the phone, the talk and data is cheaper. Noone would seriously suggest the people getting subsidised phones should also be able to get the cheaper non-subsidised call/data plans, but that's effectively wheat people are saying when they argue MS/Sony should have whatever rules are applied to Apple, also applied to them.
Again, you look at Windows gaming, which is effectively the same as console gaming, except that the hardware isn't subsidised, there's dozens of independent app stores, taking commissions from over 30%, down to under 12% for Microsoft's own store.
I suspect that is where regulators will eventually look at things, because Apple's current arguments are all being shredded rather effectively day by day in various cases - testimony has shown that Apple hasn't grown their app review team at pace (or at all) as the App Store's revenue has grown, so the whole "revenue neutral" argument is failing, and that the App Review process was not considered internally part of the security process (security being enforced by the Operating System, not the store).
On top of that, Kosta Eleftheriou's documentary efforts have made a mockery of the argument that the App Store is objectively a "safe" place to get apps, by showing how thoroughly inept the App Review, and how thoroughly corrupt the Customer Review systems are.
My suspicion is that regulators world-wide will eventually decide that App Stores, Payment Processing, Binary Hosting etc are natural separate businesses to the business of vending hardware and Operating Systems, and the case will end up looking more like the Microsoft's Internet Explorer trial (where the browser was determined to be a separate application, and not an Operating System component, regardless of how Microsoft engineered it).
Regulators will proceed on the basis that iOS and Android are separate "markets" (as they have been consistently saying), and that "the freedom to change to a different market" is not an acceptable remedy for customers, or third party developers, to the outsized power the market owners wield.
Whether regulation from that flows back to console gaming is something to consider after it's applied, because regulations aren't blunt instruments that have to be applied everywhere equally, they're not people's parents or schoolteachers settling playground fights. They contain a greater nuance than most people in the Apple media-verse want to credit. Perhaps that's because most of them are based in America, which has had dysfunctional regulatory systems for several regimes now, so they think that's "normal".
It could very well be that once Apple is regulated into having to offer multiple app stores for their unsubsidised hardware, they launch a subsidised hardware option tied to their App Store, which is so popular, everyone wants to buy their apps from Apple's store. Apple might even have grounds to argue that MS & Sony are engaged in illegal product dumping by subsidising hardware below cost.
But again, regulating Apple is about what Apple does in isolation, not about anyone else. Billy kicking the puppy is wrong, regardless of whether Jenny is punching the kitten.
