The case is not about closed platforms in general, it's about monopolistic behavior. In the US (the legal jurisdiction), Apple is the largest smartphone vendor by far, with ~50% market share. Epic is trying to show that Apple is abusing its market dominance. That's the case.
The Justice department has said that more that 50% is generally required to be considered a monopoly power, but 70% is a stronger case[2] (not a lawyer, if someone can parse this better please do)
The PS4 has 58% of the gaming console market currently.
I’m trying to figure out where the monopoly argument comes from. Apple hasn’t demonstrated that they have monopoly pricing power since even the Windows store takes 30% and they’re obviously using their dominance in the smartphone space to advantage themselves in… the smartphone space.
Windows and the Apple App Store don’t complete with each other.
Also, if PlayStation has control of that much of the market, perhaps there ought to be some regulations there as well. Does Sony similarly force all in game sales to use their payment processor and forbid you from mentioning it or encouraging folks to pay you directly?
There shouldn’t be any regulation of PlayStation, because consumers are actively choosing to buy into the PlayStation ecosystem. By the same vein, consumers are actively choosing to buy into the iOS ecosystem. No consumer has been forced into being part of the iOS or PlayStation ecosystem.
The argument is that when a vendor controls a large enough portion of the market, consumers might not be left with sufficient choice for market forces to prevent abusive behaviors. This idea has significant legal precedent and legislation behind it throughout the entire western world.
The question isn't whether you actively chose to buy into the PlayStation ecosystem. It's whether you had a meaningful choice available to you and whether the vendor is abusing it's market power.
The % is not enough in itself, otherwise the case would be very short, open and shut. The question is, does Sony abuse its market power?
If console developers are satisfied with the deal, then it's hard to say that it's abusive.
Also, there's no specific % cut that can be said to be excessive, outside of context. In some cases, a 50% cut may be a good deal. It sounds to me like console vendors may be returning better value for their cut than Apple does.
In my opinion as an Apple developer, Apple returns very little value for its 30% cut. I'd be happy to pay 30% if it was worth it, but it's not.
