Apple Confirms It Will Not Allow Stadia and xCloud on iOS

Apple has dealt Stadia and xCloud the red ring of death. The company has barred the services from its iOS walled garden on the basis of violating App Store guidelines. For its part, Apple says it won’t allow the services because it cannot individually vet every supported game.

• I recently connected the dots between Apple’s anticompetitive headaches and its iron App Store fist.

Macworld, not exactly an anti-Apple blog, called the company’s xCloud decision “patently absurd,” with extra color commentary unfit to print here. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has heaped criticism on Apple, saying it has “gone crazy” with App Store rev share policies.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft criticized the decision. The company has counseled U.S. competition authorities on what it says are unfair App Store practices.

Unstoppable force meets immovable objects? I’d bet Apple and the cloud players will find a mutually agreeable way forward. The platforms don’t want to miss out on a market of nearly 1.5 billion iOS users, while Apple doesn’t want to risk losing users to Android because they can’t access a new technology.