This seems pretty substantial. Google has announced settling with Epic and the new Google Play Store policies that’ll rollout worldwide between now and 2027 as a result.
The big changes are a lower commission from apps (as low as 15% it seems), making Google play billing optional, and an optional streamlined process for downloading third party app stores on android.
This all seems pretty huge. The first thing that came to mind was Xbox possibly being able to include Cloud Gaming & remote play in the Xbox mobile app alongside buying games. Xbox could also actually genuinely pursue an official mobile games store on Android. However, thinking about it this will also have long term affects on how software platforms and ecosystems work. Once the mobile kings get cracked open it’ll be really hard to justify a closed ecosystem at all. I also imagine that developers in gaming will begin to chastise the the 30% cuts once that stops being the norm. Android is a huge pillar of that with over 4 billion people owning smartphones and over 70% of that market being Android.
I think we’ll see Apple down the line match Google in some, if not all, of these policies (and they’ll pat themselves on the back for their innovation). We’ll also see more eyebrows get raised at Playstation and Nintendo, and Xbox might benefit even more from pushing ahead with the PC hybrid and Xbox Play Anywhere. It’ll be a couple of years minimum before we even start to know, but I’m hopeful this is a big change that starts the ball rolling on opening up all platform ecosystems.