Tim Sweeney can make his own Epic phone with his own EpicOS and I will bet all apps will need to be downloaded only from the Epic store.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Calls Apple's App Store a 'Disservice to Developers'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I agree. I used to pay $2,500 for a new Creative Suite license (not upgrade). Now I just pay $50 a month. I used to pay $200 for Windows licenses. I used to pay $150 for Office. Much better IMO.
Tim Sweeney got all the benefits of Apple propping up Fortnite and promoting it. Got the investment from Tencent and goes after Apple. Took Sony’s money and doesn’t go after the same exact business model. Epic sees the massive market of the App Store and wants to be The App Store. He doesn’t care about user choice. He wants to be the choice. Any one that thinks otherwise, isn’t paying attention to the tactics the Epic employs.
Turns out the correct answer was in between our two versions of history.
The iPhone launched at $499 (4Gb) and $599 (8 Gb) without subsidy but did require a 2 yr contract. They eliminated the 4Gb version and dropped the price of the 8GB to $399 without subsidy (and gave a $100 credit to early adopters). The iPhone 3G started $599 unlocked, $199 with subsidy.
I'm not sure how much that necessarily changes my original "version" but my point was that the consumer price (each with 2 year AT&T contract) for an 8GB iPhone went from $599 at launch in 2007 to just $199 for an iPhone 3G in 2008. That's a significant 2/3rds drop.
Some Apple fans like to ridicule Steve Ballmer for laughing at the iPhone in 2007 but he turned out to be right about at least one thing, the price. That price issue ended up having to be fairly quickly and significantly "corrected."
Except Amazon and eBay get a cut of stuff sold through their store… they set it all up and deserve the cut - same with PlayStation and Xbox and they are operating systems and infrastructures - it’s called retail. You can go elsewhere to shop… just like apple safe harbour. if you don’t like it go to Android.
I think it's a significant part of the story that Apple's price for the iPhone only temporarily dropped $200 in that year. In fact the starting price went up by $100 from the original release to the iPhone 3G release.
Also, IIRC AT&T used the lack of subsidy to lower the price of the plan. I'm pretty sure that the two year cost including the plan went up with the iPhone 3G.
And I pay 15 to apple - would happily pay 30 of it hit the targets! And the epic store is a walled curated garden. You can’t just post you app there you have tone accepted which is a long and tedious not remotely guaranteed task.
That's funny because Epic is a disservice to the OS agnostic gaming community.
Just the other day another post like this came out. I said pretty much what everyone here has said - we don’t want things like they were before the App Store. The App Store/Play Store are what really set the foundation for digital apps.
Tim and these politicians are just upset became Apple has more influence and money than them. They have it b/c they try not to do dumb business. And I know there is room to grow for Apple with the way it does things. Could they charge less, sure but what would we lose/gain for it?
Tim and these politicians are just upset became Apple has more influence and money than them. They have it b/c they try not to do dumb business. And I know there is room to grow for Apple with the way it does things. Could they charge less, sure but what would we lose/gain for it?
He's such a little crybaby. His ongoing temper-tantrum of greed is boring.
Screw him
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has called Apple's App Store, which has helped app makers earn over $260 billion since its launch, a "disservice to developers" that forces them to treat their apps as "sub-par."
Sweeney made the comments in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, where he repeated Epic Games' previous talking points about Apple and how it is "anti-competitive" and "monopolistic." Sweeney said that Apple has "won fairly" in persuading customers to buy its hardware products but claims that forcing customers to use the App Store is unfair.
According to Sweeney, Apple uses its fair advantage in hardware to "gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets. And that breaks all the competitive dynamics that kept the tech industry healthy in the past."
Sweeney criticized the App Store as a platform itself, saying that despite Apple's attempt to market it as a service, it's actually a "disservice to developers." "The app store is not a service. The app store is a disservice to developers. The app store forces developers to treat their software in a sub-par way to give customers a sub-par experience to charge uncompetitive handling and processing fees to inflate the price of digital goods," the CEO of Epic Games said.
Apple has said that the App Store since its launch has helped developers earn over $260 billion and has fostered an iOS app economy that has created over 2.2 million jobs in the U.S. alone.
Epic Games has been embroiled in a massive lawsuit against Apple, concerning the App Store, that started in 2020 and is now entering its second year. The suit and its history may be confusing for some, but we have all the details in our guide.
Article Link: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Calls Apple's App Store a 'Disservice to Developers'
Good point.
Epic can sell VBucks on their own website, or gift cards in retail stores, and not give 30% to Apple or Google.
So why are there all these legal battles with Apple and Google?
Meanwhile... Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo also charge 30% and Tim Sweeney doesn't have a problem with that.
?
Not really because the original iPhone prices would've been even higher without a contract. Prices for iPhones (with 2 year wireless contracts) actually continued to drop for a number of years. By 2013, you could get a new 16GB iPhone 5c for just $99 which was $500 less and with twice the storage of the original 8GB iPhone at launch in 2007.
Apple owes a lot to developers. Apple makes a ton from App Store commission/fees and without developers, iPhone/iOS may not even be able to exist since most consumers would likely go to Android or some other mobile OS platform where apps were available.
The developers owe a lot to Apple. Look at all that $99 dollars, plus a computer, plus sweat equity buys. Nonetheless it's Apples' house and as a guest in Apples' a dev has to respect the rules.
And in traditional retail, the store owners generally receive the opposite! They pay 70% to bring products in, and make less than 30% from markup.
For developers to get to keep 70% off the top is a huge win for them!
I promise you... any changes that are forced onto Apple will only result in developers having to work harder and make even less. Apple has been delivering tremendous value with their model.
The original iPhone wasn’t subsidized. The subsequent iPhones were, so my point was that the comparison wasn’t apples to apples.
The iPhone 5c was essentially a repackaged iPhone 5 which was a year old. The ASP for the iPhone remained consistently around $600 from the 3G until the release of the iPhone X.
Unfortunately, your analogies are not accurate. You can't simplify the way that you did.
This "platform" that you speak of includes a TON of features:
- powerful developer tools updated EVERY YEAR.
- continued enhancements to software and hardware features EVERY YEAR.
- ongoing marketing EVERY DAY
- free, reliable distribution of apps to a global marketplace
- customer support channels
- credit card processing
VISA and MasterCard are doing nothing to help my business. They just take money for processing transactions after I've already done all of the hard work. And they don't give my business more and more value each and every year. We might see improvements from them every 5-10 years.
For the 30% that Apple takes, they are providing a MASSIVE amount of value to developers and consumers on an ongoing basis. Who will pay for all of that once the revenue stops flowing?
It's only those looking at the simple numbers, without understanding the true costs and values, that are arguing that Apple takes too much. They don't.
Exactly. Seems a lot of people think with their emotions. Most of it out of ignorance, I suspect.
Of course it goes both ways but my response was specifically regarding the statement that "Apple owes nothing to developers." Apple's iPhone may not even exist without developers as consumers would likely go elsewhere, like Android and/or some other mobile OS that could come along, if developers chose not to make apps for iOS. Apple would lose iPhone revenue, App Store revenue, etc.
if developers decided tomorrow to stop making apps for iOS, it would hurt Apple a lot more in the long run than it would the average developer.
My comments on this were speaking to the consumer price for the iPhone which dropped significantly at the beginning. The price was slashed 33% to 40% within just three months and even more later as already discussed. The iPhone was overpriced out of the gate (Ballmer was riight on that point) and without these notable price drops, the iPhone's long-term future would not have been nearly as good.