Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I think it is worse, because again, if you're playing Fortnite on iOS, chances are high that if you really, really love Fortnite, you're able to go buy a Switch Light for $150 or $200 and keep playing Fortnite. Yup. Okay, so if it's worse for Apple, then what we're saying is Apple should blink. Apple should not bring down the ban hammer and kick all Fortnite users off the phone. There's some middle ground where they just keep them banned, but I think that's just as bad for them. It's just as bad a look as disabling functionality from all the phones that currently have Fortnite installed, or as John Gruber would put it, the kill switch. What does Apple do? Apple’s actually in the hot seat then. Let's say that Epic’s going to hold strong. Epic's demands are very interesting here. They want an App Store, they want to be able to compete with the App Store by putting the Epic Games Store on the phone, and they want to be able to charge consumers money directly through their app. If Apple says yes to the first one, if they want to give on one of these two things. If they say yes to the first one, their whole strategic positioning is totally screwed. They make all the services revenue because the App Store is a monopoly. If they do the second and budge on the 30%, that's an $18 billion a year business for them. Every single percent you budge on is incredibly impactful. It's not clear that Apple should blink either. I actually think the best long-term value preserving—and ultimately value creative move for Apple—is not to give in to Epic on saying you can have your own apps store here, but to lower their own take rate in line. Because it's not just about Epic here. There’s a bigger thing going on, which is that developers no longer love Apple. It's not just Epic. It’s Basecamp. It's everybody.…

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