Today, Apple finally announced after following certain complaints over the last few months from several developers, with new changes to the App Store Review Guidelines, which are regarding the streaming game platforms. Microsoft also said that it doesn’t look like other companies have approved all these changes.
Next week probably, Microsoft will launch the xCloud platform on all the Android devices. But it hasn’t yet been mentioned by the company whether it has something planned to launch xCloud games on the iOS App Store, which are inline with the app store guidelines.
Through Apple’s in-app purchases system, the streaming games must also be adapted to offer any additional item purchases. The main objective of xCloud, according to Microsoft is that it should make the gaming experience as easy and intuitive as any movie or music streaming service. Also, the Apple rules would prevent just that from the curated catalogue gamers who want to jump directly into a game using it, within one app just like you do with songs or movies, and also not to be forced to download number of apps to play individual games from the cloud. They are committed to putting gamers at the centre of everything they do, and moreover providing them a great experience is the core of that mission.
The main objective of Apple is that it wants each of the streaming games to be released as a standalone app rather than a single app that works as an alternative to the App store. It will have to release all 100+ games on the App Store if Microsoft wants xCloud on iOS, as an individual apps and also each one has to go through Apple’s review process.
Apple rejected any streaming game app on the grounds that the company has to review and also till today, App Store Review Guidelines changes have to approve each game individually. The rules are same as earlier for the new guidelines, which are allowing game streaming apps to be released on App Store.
Microsoft told the media, in response to the new App Store Review Guidelines, that this will give “a bad experience for customers” as Apple is still trying to impose strict rules for this category of apps, which will further make it more impractical to launch them in App Store.
