Every time I read one of these stories, I think of Nintendo in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, Nintendo was the undisputed king of video games with an install base of over 60 million NES consoles. They had a trusted brand, a massive library of titles, and money coming in hand-over-fist. They even managed to keep that success rolling, and the SNES was the top console through the early 90s.
Developers hated doing business with Nintendo. Nintendo put every game through a rigorous review process, and stripped out anything that they found objectionable. This castrated a lot of games like Mortal Kombat and Final Fight, and ensured that some titles never came to market at all.
Nintendo also charged a licensing fee, and ensured that only licensed games could be played. In order to distribute games, publishers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at pretty hefty prices.
This system worked great until Sony came along, and told publishers that they'd cut a better deal. Much more relaxed terms, and a far fewer restrictions on content. Suddenly, developers migrated en masse to the Playstation. Square became Sony-only. Capcom suddenly concentrated on Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid. All of a sudden, all the big new games were Playstation exclusives, and the only big games for N64 were Nintendo's own first-party titles. At the time, it felt like a switch had been flipped.
I feel a similar dynamic starting to play out with the App Store and Android. History seldom repeats itself, but it tends to rhyme.
You're being a little too short-sighted. Nintendo came to dominance entirely because of their review process. They saw that Atari was killed off by the lack of consumer confidence that came from too many crappy games. The video games crash of 1983 was precipitated in large part by just three titles:
() Pac-Man 2600, considered by many to be the worst arcade conversion ever, sold 7 million units to unsuspecting customers who expected a faithful translation of the arcade game.
() E.T. was so hyped and so bad that several million copies were buried in the deserts of New Mexico.
() Custer's Revenge required the player to rape a native American woman.
Nintendo's Seal of Quality was in large part what revived the video games business, especially in the US. Parents who knew nothing about games could be assured that whatever they chose for their kids would be suitable and at least reasonably fun. Sony's ascendence could be just as readily explained by their use of CD-ROM media, the quality and innovation of their first-party titles and the phenomenal marketing effort that made PlayStation one of the coolest brands of the decade.
Personally, I think the success of the PlayStation is encapsulated in the masterful WipEout, the launch title that defined the console. Developed by the brilliant Psygnosis, the graphic design was handled from the start by The Designer's Republic, best known for their ultra-cool record covers for the Warp label. The music featured a careful selection of underground dance tracks. The game was so relentlessly cool that many European nightclubs begged Sony for demo systems for their chill-out rooms. In one fell stroke Sony divorced themselves from the child-friendly image of video games and in tandem with their brilliant advertising and promotion made video games seem almost dangerous and subversive. Genius.
Starting with the Wii Nintendo has significantly loosened their requirements for publishing games on their platforms. The Wii SDK is much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude) than either the Xbox or PS3 dev kits, the from what I can tell approval processes are far less onerous.
What has resulted? A deluge of crap. The amount of cheap shovelware games for the Wii boggles the mind, and dilutes the Wii brand significantly. It gets so bad that even non-gamer grandmas have noticed.
In comparison, Sony and MS are riding high, they have a gigantic amount of 3rd party support, people are willing to pay their ticket price for entry to the platform, and willing to put up with a lot more content restrictions (e.g., no free DLC, extensive multiplay/connectivity requirements even for singleplayer games)
There's a fine line to be walked here, and I'm not sure if Android has the model right either.
Sadly, I've seen no developer-centric push from Google. The SDK and tooling are excellent and the platform is very open, but the Android Marketplace itself is crap. The app descriptions and screenshots are paltry, there are no statics or metrics of any kind (other than total number of downloads and users), payment is not available in most countries, in-app purchases are nowhere on the roadmap and there isn't even a web-interface to the store!
For such an important piece of Android, the Marketplace is remarkably shitty.
I think this is a good and interesting analogy. I think it should be noted though that developers most likely came to Playstation not entirely because of the looser content restrictions (though that probably helped) but because of the superior, CD-ROM based hardware of the Playstation and its higher market share.
If Apple ever ends up without a device that doesn't support what's universally understood to be The Next Big Thing (Nintendo didn't like the disc format mostly because it was easy to pirate) while the Android vendors do have it, the analogy would be much more apt.
I had wondered if Apple had removed them simply because the apps were of such low quality. This would explain why Playboy, Sport Illustrated etc are still present.
The cheap 'boobs/babes/bikini' apps constantly filled many slots in the top app lists, yet most seemed to be simply a collection of images and as such, their ratings were very, very low. They seemed to have no real content that wasn't freely available on the web.
Looking at the ones that were high in the top free app lists, they were simply 6-8 images of women in bikinis with ads attached.
Maybe someday I will understand why sexual content "sullies" a brand's reputation. (Or rather why seeing 99% skin is fine and "family friendly", but as soon as the other 1% comes out, it's suddenly dirty. Also, if sex isn't "family friendly", where exactly did these families come from?)
Actually... I know I will probably never understand this.
Just because social traditions are formed without conscious thought does not mean that they are without reason.
There is a large population that believes it is healthy to practice some restraint on the expression of human sexuality. They may not have a rational argument for believing so, but witnessing the dissolution of the family in the western world I wonder if traditional mores may be wiser than some of us think.
Some people with children desire to encourage them to have some reservation in their expression of sexuality, to resist the uninhibited style of our age. They hope to at least raise children that refrain from surfing porn with a handheld computer on a commuter train, fer chrissakes. And if Apple is willing to cater to their sensibilities, they will continue to earn their customers' money. It boils down to consumer preference and giving users what they want.
I've typed two(!) replies to this and deleted both, so here goes a third time.
Boobs beat bombs.
By that I mean that very, very, very rarely does a kid watch Terminator and go out and become some killing machine at the mall. But all the time kids watch porno and go out and get the neighbor's kid pregnant (or get pregnant themselves). So parents have a highly irrational fear of doing anything to increase the already high sex drive that kids have. Especially in ages without birth control, controlling procreation until there was a good chance at child survival was a critical part of maintaining the species. Even with birth control, STDs travel through younger populations at a much, much higher rate than older ones, usually due to passions overcoming practicality.
From what I understood, many of the banned apps did not contain explicit nudity - so they basically fall into the "99%" category. They still got banned because they too are presumably not considered family-friendly
Does John Gruber have any demonstrable evidence to back up his opinions? No, they're rank speculation. They are, at best, educated guesses. I tire of this kind of blogging. I'm not saying that Mr. Gruber isn't informed, or intelligent, or perceptive. What I'm saying is that he's got nothing beyond that, and that's not good enough for me.
start blah blah apple doesnt like their brand to be sullied by risque material blah blah blah apple's walled-garden approach is dangerous for developers blah blah end
Sorry, getting so bored with repetitive nature of all discussion around app store. Apple is walled garden, will do what they want, allowed to do what they want.
Not exactly a great move on apple's part but I can understand why. I'd imagine quite a few parents would be upset to see adult content in the app store.
There are quite a few parents that are upset that 'adult content' exists at all, but I wouldn't say that they have a right to try and impose those views on everyone else.
[+] [-] megaduck|16 years ago|reply
Developers hated doing business with Nintendo. Nintendo put every game through a rigorous review process, and stripped out anything that they found objectionable. This castrated a lot of games like Mortal Kombat and Final Fight, and ensured that some titles never came to market at all.
Nintendo also charged a licensing fee, and ensured that only licensed games could be played. In order to distribute games, publishers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at pretty hefty prices.
This system worked great until Sony came along, and told publishers that they'd cut a better deal. Much more relaxed terms, and a far fewer restrictions on content. Suddenly, developers migrated en masse to the Playstation. Square became Sony-only. Capcom suddenly concentrated on Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid. All of a sudden, all the big new games were Playstation exclusives, and the only big games for N64 were Nintendo's own first-party titles. At the time, it felt like a switch had been flipped.
I feel a similar dynamic starting to play out with the App Store and Android. History seldom repeats itself, but it tends to rhyme.
[+] [-] jdietrich|16 years ago|reply
() Pac-Man 2600, considered by many to be the worst arcade conversion ever, sold 7 million units to unsuspecting customers who expected a faithful translation of the arcade game.
() E.T. was so hyped and so bad that several million copies were buried in the deserts of New Mexico.
() Custer's Revenge required the player to rape a native American woman.
Nintendo's Seal of Quality was in large part what revived the video games business, especially in the US. Parents who knew nothing about games could be assured that whatever they chose for their kids would be suitable and at least reasonably fun. Sony's ascendence could be just as readily explained by their use of CD-ROM media, the quality and innovation of their first-party titles and the phenomenal marketing effort that made PlayStation one of the coolest brands of the decade.
Personally, I think the success of the PlayStation is encapsulated in the masterful WipEout, the launch title that defined the console. Developed by the brilliant Psygnosis, the graphic design was handled from the start by The Designer's Republic, best known for their ultra-cool record covers for the Warp label. The music featured a careful selection of underground dance tracks. The game was so relentlessly cool that many European nightclubs begged Sony for demo systems for their chill-out rooms. In one fell stroke Sony divorced themselves from the child-friendly image of video games and in tandem with their brilliant advertising and promotion made video games seem almost dangerous and subversive. Genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA
[+] [-] potatolicious|16 years ago|reply
Starting with the Wii Nintendo has significantly loosened their requirements for publishing games on their platforms. The Wii SDK is much cheaper (almost an order of magnitude) than either the Xbox or PS3 dev kits, the from what I can tell approval processes are far less onerous.
What has resulted? A deluge of crap. The amount of cheap shovelware games for the Wii boggles the mind, and dilutes the Wii brand significantly. It gets so bad that even non-gamer grandmas have noticed.
In comparison, Sony and MS are riding high, they have a gigantic amount of 3rd party support, people are willing to pay their ticket price for entry to the platform, and willing to put up with a lot more content restrictions (e.g., no free DLC, extensive multiplay/connectivity requirements even for singleplayer games)
There's a fine line to be walked here, and I'm not sure if Android has the model right either.
[+] [-] martythemaniak|16 years ago|reply
For such an important piece of Android, the Marketplace is remarkably shitty.
[+] [-] glhaynes|16 years ago|reply
If Apple ever ends up without a device that doesn't support what's universally understood to be The Next Big Thing (Nintendo didn't like the disc format mostly because it was easy to pirate) while the Android vendors do have it, the analogy would be much more apt.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Gmo|16 years ago|reply
Nonetheless, the analogy seems to be relatively adequate here.
[+] [-] tdm911|16 years ago|reply
The cheap 'boobs/babes/bikini' apps constantly filled many slots in the top app lists, yet most seemed to be simply a collection of images and as such, their ratings were very, very low. They seemed to have no real content that wasn't freely available on the web.
Looking at the ones that were high in the top free app lists, they were simply 6-8 images of women in bikinis with ads attached.
[+] [-] jvdh|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elai|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cakesy|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cakesy|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jrockway|16 years ago|reply
Actually... I know I will probably never understand this.
[+] [-] jacoblyles|16 years ago|reply
There is a large population that believes it is healthy to practice some restraint on the expression of human sexuality. They may not have a rational argument for believing so, but witnessing the dissolution of the family in the western world I wonder if traditional mores may be wiser than some of us think.
Some people with children desire to encourage them to have some reservation in their expression of sexuality, to resist the uninhibited style of our age. They hope to at least raise children that refrain from surfing porn with a handheld computer on a commuter train, fer chrissakes. And if Apple is willing to cater to their sensibilities, they will continue to earn their customers' money. It boils down to consumer preference and giving users what they want.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|16 years ago|reply
Boobs beat bombs.
By that I mean that very, very, very rarely does a kid watch Terminator and go out and become some killing machine at the mall. But all the time kids watch porno and go out and get the neighbor's kid pregnant (or get pregnant themselves). So parents have a highly irrational fear of doing anything to increase the already high sex drive that kids have. Especially in ages without birth control, controlling procreation until there was a good chance at child survival was a critical part of maintaining the species. Even with birth control, STDs travel through younger populations at a much, much higher rate than older ones, usually due to passions overcoming practicality.
Boobs beat bombs.
[+] [-] statictype|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeMacMan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkramlich|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeCapone|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aresant|16 years ago|reply
Sorry, getting so bored with repetitive nature of all discussion around app store. Apple is walled garden, will do what they want, allowed to do what they want.
[+] [-] ugh|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epochwolf|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|16 years ago|reply