[fbelzile]

No, it increases choice and lowers costs for the consumer. If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice, but you might need to pay more.

I don't see Netflix pulling out of the App Store if there alternatives. Right now, this is the only thing they can do to retaliate.

[ribosometronome]

>If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice

This doesn't really match what's happened with the PC gaming marketplace. Facebook pays for exclusives to the Oculus Store, Epic (whose lawsuit brought this e-mail to light) pays for exclusives on their store. A fair few major developers only release through their own store. Cases that buck this trend (like Halo releasing on Steam) tends to be news rather than typical.

[danShumway]

Compared to the console market, availability across stores on PC is still generally better, and importantly, the barrier for consumers to buy games from multiple stores on PC is much lower than the barrier to buy a PS5/Switch exclusive game on a console that you don't own. That lack of platform control has also lead to an ecosystem of PC games that is pretty objectively more innovative and more expansive than the collection of games on any other tightly-managed competing platform.

The increasing trend of app stores on PC moving towards being silos is very worrying and harmful to consumers, but it's still a great deal better than what happens in competitive device-specific markets. Unless people like buying 3 separate gaming devices to get access to every console game that's released.

That many apps are available for both Android and iOS really has more to do with a lack of competition and a set of consumer expectations about availability than it has to do with platform management. There was a period where most PC games only released on Steam, too. But I personally enjoy being able to opt out of that store/DRM in favor of stores like Itch/GoG without losing access to every single new game that gets released. And I think my consumer choices have generally increased with the addition of newer storefronts that offer me different features that Steam refuses to offer.

It's easy to talk about the harms of fragmentation when you're happy with the status quo. But nobody who grew up protesting Steam's DRM is unhappy that more PC stores exist now, even if the market is more fragmented. And I similarly suspect that the people arguing that more choices on the iPhone would be bad for consumers are people who are happy with the app selection already, they're probably not the people who are frustrated that apps like NewPipe, Firefox, or emulators can only be accessed by moving to a completely separate ecosystem and buying a new device.