Perhaps the fact that an iPhone doesn’t have enough processing power to render a 4K AAA videogame?
But iOS isn’t running these games. An Xbox in the cloud is. The iDevice is just the interface between me and the cloud Xbox.
That logic doesn’t really work though. They already support controllers for Xbox and PS4 natively in iOS. The inputs are standard and can be reviewed even if the controllers were to change significantly in the next generation of consoles (we already know they aren’t). It’s not like game developers are coding the inputs themselves, they are just reacting to them. Even then, the inputs from the user are handled by Microsoft either by the server or your console at home. There’s no risk of “code injection” because the game is actually being run somewhere else and not on the iOS device itself. You are only “viewing” or “streaming” the rendering as a result of said inputs. Microsoft is in control of the stream that gets sent to your device, much like Netflix or YouTube. If they’re concerned about content, they can restrict what games can be presented in the iOS apps for their service based on existing ESRB ratings or risk being taken down. That would be no different than most retailers opting not to carry Adult rated games, which to begin with are pretty rare.
The practice of reviewing apps itself is not intrinsically harmful, but there are certain situations where it comes off or is that way. This particular situation is harmful to their consumers because some of them are now considering getting a competitor’s device just to get access to the service. Even if it was not their intention to “suppress” the video game streaming industry, their reasoning and the existence of Apple Arcade, although not a streaming service, look bad. Their logic doesn’t really hold up either since the game’s code isn’t being run on the device. Every bit of the app that will execute code locally on the device should able to be reviewed in their process. Unless we’re all missing something and Microsoft actually does cache bits of the game locally on the device (game state, save data, etc), then this shouldn’t be any different than Netflix (especially with the interactive videos) or YouTube.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s the policy itself that’s in question here. Just because they’ve been getting away with it since they put the policy in place and it’s been years doesn’t make the policy correct or not monopolistic. It’s clearly given Apple a wide berth to enter the space themselves with their likely to fail anyway Apple Arcade. It might not be a streaming service, but it is currently one of the only gaming subscription services on iOS. Regardless of their intention here, it doesn’t look great for them. Microsoft is not exhibiting any kind of monopolistic behavior in this particular case. They just want their service accessible for as many as their customers and as many of their devices as they can.
I understand that, but again, that’s not really the point here. It’s the App Store’s seemingly arbitrary review policy that’s preventing Microsoft and companies like Microsoft from releasing services like xCloud, Stadia, etc. on their platform. It seems to be anti-competitive behavior when other similar types of apps already exist in the App Store.
