But it has sort of happened on Windows with gaming. I’ve got games on Steam, GOG, MS Store, and Epic. It’s annoying and I very much preferred the state of things a decade ago when it was just Steam.
Android has curated a market of users who don’t buy apps. I don’t know that we can extrapolate their alt-store outcome to iOS where the buyers are.
Steam was doing sales before the other stores popped up and I was acquiring games faster than I could play them even then. Increasing sales frequency means little to me, and is even a little annoying since I now feel like I should be constantly window shopping all the stores nearly year round to make sure I get the best sale price on something I'm after.
Epic has given a lot of free titles away, which is a big difference, but only because they're trying to buy favor and want to be the winner who takes all.
I very much preferred the state of things a decade ago when it was just Steam
Ok, but Steam is a third party store. The alternative isn't "just Steam", it's "just Microsoft". I'll gladly accept the occasional annoyance of multiple stores to avoid being locked into a monopoly.
Android has curated a market of users who don’t buy apps. I don’t know that we can extrapolate their alt-store outcome to iOS where the buyers are.