This is Why Apple Blocks Xbox Cloud Gaming (Premium)

The other day I wrote about an incredible report from the UK Competition & Markets Authority that describes Apple’s abusive business tactics. There’s a lot to this report, and I strongly recommend that anyone interested at all in personal technology take the time to read through it. That said, it is over 350 pages long, making it hard to find its many insights.

Here, I’d like to focus on one that’s quite meaningful to me: Apple’s incredible 2020 decision to prevent Microsoft from bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming---previously codenamed Project xCloud---to the iPhone and iPad. At the time, I had openly wondered whether Apple’s stance on Xbox Cloud Gaming was related to Apple Arcade, the game subscription service that Apple launched around the same time that Microsoft started publicly testing xCloud. But as the UK report points out, there’s much more to it than that.

First, a bit of background. Microsoft announced Project xCloud in October 2018 and began testing the service internally in May 2019. This was followed by a public preview in October 2019 that suspiciously was made available only on Android at first. And when a more limited public preview for iOS followed in February 2020, we got our first hint at why our suspicions were correct: unlike with the Android version, Project xCloud on iOS only provided access to a single game. Hm.

By August 2020, the iOS preview had expired with no major updates, and Microsoft finally began expressing its frustrations publicly. The problem, it said, was Apple. Which had restricted the number of testers Microsoft could sign-up and prevented the firm from letting its app stream games from an Xbox One console. But the biggest issue, of course, was that single game limitation: Apple would not allow users to stream the entire xCloud game catalog from a single app, called Xbox. Instead, it wanted Microsoft to offer each game via its own app so that it could apply its 30 percent in-app and online services fees and approve each app individually.

In September 2020, Apple went public with the just-invented new App Store policies that it was using to prevent Microsoft from bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming to its devices. Among the requirements, each game update had to be submitted for review, and “games must use in-app purchases to unlock features or functionality, etc.,” ensuring that Apple would get its cut. Many, including me, argued that game streaming services should work just like video or music streaming services. Netflix, after all, doesn’t have to create a new app for every movie and TV show it offers.

“This remains a bad experience for customers,” Microsoft noted at the time. “Gamers want to jump directly into a game from their curated catalog within one app just like they do with movies or songs, and not be forced to download over 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud. We’re committed to putting gamers at the center of everything we do, and providing a grea...