And Microsoft has 100% of the market on the Xbox Store? And Sony has 100% of the market on the PS Store? I’m not following... If you define the “market” so precisely, anyone can have a monopoly on something.
What I’m wondering is: what makes a “general computing device”? As Sony showed with OtherOS on the PS3 (and PS3 based supercomputers), a console can be used as a general purpose computer. It ran full blown Linux and supported USB peripherals.
While a phone is integral to daily life, that doesn’t make something “general purpose”, IMO. I can’t write code comfortably on it, for example. The iPad, OTOH, could be argued to be a general purpose computer. Heck, Apple even advertises it as a laptop replacement! But phones? I just don’t see it.
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That debate is the fundamental rub though: if you don’t see phones as “general purpose”, you’re more ok with locked down systems (consoles for example), but if you do see them as that, opening them up seems logical. The problem is that phones are in a gray area; they do many things computers do such as web browsing, email, etc., but they don’t function as them sometimes. Sure, we could put VS Code on Android, but I doubt anyone would ever use it.
So there’s not really a clear answer, and it isn’t helped by bad arguments from both sides: the “open” crowd claims nothing would change for those who don’t want it do (just keep using Apple’s App Store and ignore the others), but it would very easily cause a race to the bottom. And the “closed” crowd says to just choose Android, but Android is in many ways worse than iOS; worse privacy is a big thing.
Those game discs are still signed by Microsoft/Sony. You’re can’t burn your own copies of your indie game. The difference is that game discs are generally digitally licensed differently to allow reselling the disc (the disc itself acts as a DRM key).
