Apple’s acquiescence, Google’s guilt, and what to expect from Nintendo’s S(Wii)tch… | Week in Views

• The PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week

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The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can’t let go of…

So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we’ve created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.

Apple revamps business terms in the EU to enable App Store link-outs and out-of-store promotions

Could things get any more complicated in the world of App Store fees?

Here’s a challenge for those in the European Union. Without checking, what is the revenue share you owe Apple for when an App Store user makes a purchase from your game?

If you know exactly what you owe Apple, sign up here. Don’t know? Me neither.

We started with a 30% revenue share. I’m not here to argue against the revenue share being dropped. And at this point, we’ve debated the issue to death.

But Apple is tying itself up in knots responding to new regulations around the world. It hasn’t come up with a one-size fits all solution. Instead, it’s playing whack-a-mole to try and maintain the status quo as much as it possibly can.

In the EU, first we had the alternative business terms with a 17% share (or is that 10%? Or 20%?). Oh, and the core technology fee that charges €0.50 per install, on an annual basis.

Now – and I had to re-read the article I myself wrote to check this – the 5% ‘initial acquisition fee’ and the ‘store services fee’, which is anywhere from 5% to 10% to 20%. Well okay then.

These cover payments from link-outs. Oh, Apple is now letting developers point to sales outside the App Store. But it has rights to receive a royalty from that user for off-store payments for 12 months (or a further install after each install, reinstall and update of the App Store app by the same user).

It’s all getting a bit out of hand, isn’t it? And with the European Commission investigating Apple for non-compliance and concerns over the core technology fee, it seems like more changes could be coming soon. I’m looking forward to services popping up just to calculate the fees.

If Apple was a Batman villain, it would be the Riddler.

US judge finds Google guilty in landmark search and advertising monopoly case

Let’s face it. At some point everybody has asked the question: “How come Google won the internet?” Or – if you want to show your age – perhaps: “So what happened to Lycos? Or Alta Vista?” Or even – if you want to dive into the deep end – how about: “Surely Google’s stranglehold on the internet can’t even be legal, can it?”

Well, ‘good’ news. It turns out you were right. Google are indeed running an illegal monopoly and the battle to bring them down and turn around their otherwise impenetrable empire starts right now. 

Most interesting for me was the fact that the single biggest damning piece of evidence has been hiding in plain sight for years – the fact that Google have been paying Apple (and Mozilla) billions of dollars to be the default search engine on those platforms, instantly slinging a convenience firewall up in front of users of those platforms in exchange for cash. 

And if search ‘just works’, why mess with the settings? That – frankly – isn’t legal.

What IS surprising is a) How long it’s taken for this to become a problem and b) That Apple takes (at the last count) $20 billion dollars a year (representing 17% of their profits) from a company that’s their sworn mortal enemy.

It’s like Man United wearing shirts that say “Man United are shit – sponsored by Man City”. Or Taylor Swift singing about how much she loves Scooter Braun. Or simply going the whole hog and having iPhones featuring a splash screen that says “Android is better than iPhone and you are an idiot.”

As to whether the slapped-wrist Google will eventually (when this case lumbers to a close in a few years) actually give up anything or whether the internet will be any different is anyone’s guess. But you can bet that Apple won’t be happy about being $20 billion lighter next year…

Microsoft and Activision form new Blizzard team to expand iconic franchises

Microsoft and Activision are forming a new team to expand on iconic franchises such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Starcraft. The interesting part in all this is that the team is apparently made up predominantly of ex-King employees, which makes me think surely there’s got to be something mobile coming out of all this.

King themselves have, of course, worked with big IP names before, but it’s never quite borne any fruit for them. And Candy Crush has remained the studio flagship for many years. So I’m intrigued to see if a new team pulled from King can finally crack the code and make something mobile from one of these big IPs. 

This would also be a great tie-in with the planned Xbox mobile store, which was supposed to be out by the end of July, but we’re still waiting to see that come to life. New stores need incentives for players to actually use them, and being able to push games taken from already popular IPs would be a perfect lure.

I’m absolutely expecting something mobile from this new team, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t mobile exclusive but rather cross-platform. Time will tell. 

Nintendo profits down 70.6% with falling sales across Switch and other IP ventures

A fall in sales and operating profits at Nintendo come as no small surprise as the Switch winds down – with only two first-party releases in its Q1 and both of them being remasters.

Compare that with the huge success of Q1 2023 – packed with Mario movie cinema ticket sales and the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – and suddenly the scale of this year’s fall is that much easier to comprehend.

So, while far from good news for the company, the decline in operating profit can at least be explained; beyond that, it suggests Nintendo may be holding back its next big hitters for whatever comes after the Switch.

The console is midway through its eighth year on the market and Nintendo has already teased that it will reveal its next console this fiscal year, so faltering excitement around 2017’s hardware and no brand-new games this Q1, all point towards an announcement coming soon.

Of course, rumours have been rife about what that next console could be with most colloquially calling it the Switch 2. That naming convention is a bit too straightforward for a company like Nintendo, at least historically, so I’d personally prefer something more creative like the S(Wii)tch.

If somehow, someway, that name becomes reality, you heard it here first…