Apple and Epic Games have more than their fair share of differences, especially when it comes to the App Store. As both companies move forward with new augmented and virtual reality platforms, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is already sounding the alarm about Apple’s behavior.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Sweeney shared his thoughts on the so-called metaverse, including Epic’s vision for a “unified” ecosystem that won’t become “another walled garden.” It’s a clear blow to Apple, which Sweeney believes runs a walled garden with an App Store for iPhones and iPads.
When asked directly about the obstacles to this “unified” vision of the metaverse, Sweeney immediately pointed to Apple. Sweeney believes that Apple will either “crush the metaverse, or extract all the profits from it.”
“They will either try to crush the metaverse or they will extract all the profits from it. One or the other. Apple does not allow you to use a competing browser engine. So they can do the same with the metaverse, so [they] might say “You have to use Apple’s limited metaverse engine, you can’t make your own, you can’t use Unreal.” They could just change all the rules of the platform tomorrow to kill everything everyone is doing, and so we need really strong antitrust enforcement. [laws]. And that’s why we’re fighting it so hard.”
Sweeney went on to say that Epic can overcome any other issues that might get in the way of its vision for the metaverse. “We believe that they completely dominate this business if they are allowed to use their bargaining power and equipment to do so,” Sweeney said, referring to Apple. So we are fighting it.
Epic has a broad interest in the metaverse, and Sweeney says the company wants to “compete on engines with Unreal Engine”, with “server hosting in the future” and more. “But in the future they will be an open economy for that. We want to have the best asset market,” he explained.
“If we just build this thing in an open environment, then companies can live off their merits. We really like it because we have a history of winning essentially when we were given a chance, and we are terribly disappointed in markets like iOS, where you just can’t create an Epic Games Store for iOS, because Apple says: “You can “. do not compete with us!”
For its part, Apple is expected to announce its Reality Pro headset at WWDC in June along with new software platforms to operate this mixed reality headset. Apple, however, doesn’t like the term “metaverse”. “I always think it’s important that people understand what it is,” Tim Cook said in an interview last year. “And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.”
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