Apple’s new rules about cloud gaming what does it actually mean?

Yes! Apple has changed the rules.

Few weeks after suggesting its iOS App Store guidelines would prevent cloud gaming services like Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud from appearing on an iPhone or iPad, the company has turned the rules around, telling journalists last Friday that Google and Microsoft’s streaming games are actually welcome after all.

However, looking at how cloud game services operate, and then the at Apple’s actual written rules, you’ll see that’s only technically true. Being presice, the reality is one of two things:

Either 1) Apple is requesting Microsoft, Google and others to turn their streaming game services into an entirely new category of standalone app which guarantees Apple a profit — a kind of app rarely existing on iOS before, and one that Apple itself called “not appropriate” just last year.

Or 2) Apple’s new guidelines are all attempts to confuse it partners— a way to get the world to think Apple’s not actually rejecting the future of gaming, while simultaneously erecting so many roadblocks that companies like Google and Microsoft would never dream of taking Apple up on the offer.

THE RULE THAT DIDN’T EXIST

On August 6th, Apple told Business Insider and The Verge something it also suggested to Bloomberg months before: the primary reason why it wouldn’t allow Stadia, xCloud, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now into the App Store. That reason: Apple claimed its App Store rules require developers to submit each and every game individually so they can be reviewed and listed as apps in Apple’s App Store. Since Stadia and xCloud weren’t exactly planning to do that, they were out.

There were two gaping holes in that logic, though:

Apple permits top subscription services chock-full of content onto the iPhone that don’t have to be individually submitted. Ever heard of Netflix? YouTube? Spotify? Twitch?

Apple’s App Store Guidelines doesn’t include an explicit rule that required submitting each game as its own app.

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Arguing over whether Apple’s guidelines did or didn’t include a thing doesn’t make an sense, though, because Apple has full authority. The company can interpret the guidelines which ever way it pleases. Enforce them when it wants, and change them at will — as we saw last week.

Last Friday, Apple included the rule that earlier didn’t exist. It’s right here:

4.9.1: Each streaming game must be submitted to the App Store as an individual app so that it has an App Store product page, appears in charts and search, has user ratings and review, can be managed with ScreenTime and other parental control apps, appears on the user’s device, etc.

“What’s so wrong with listing cloud games on the App Store,” you might wonder? Well, it’s an awful lot of work with little benefit for Microsoft and Google, to start. They have to individually submit every single game, create App Store pages for each one, and hand the customer relationship to Apple — instead of just beaming their ready-made platform into the iPhone the same way they beam it into an Android phone right now.

Sony reportedly producing millions fewer PS5 consoles than expected

The tech gaints company has got manufacturing issues

Sony has reduced it expectations for PlayStation 5 production by four million units and now expects to manufacture about 11 million units come March ending, according to a new Bloomberg report.

Bloomberg had initially reported that Sony was aiming to boost production to around 10 million units by the end of December, but now says that the company is now encountering manufacturing problems.

The PS5’s system-on-a-chip, its core processing component designed with AMD, is said to be a particular issue with yields as low as 50 percent at one point, meaning that half the parts produced weren’t fit to ship. While that figure has been improving, according to Bloomberg, the yields are “yet to reach a stable level.”

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The related figure is still well above what Sony had aimed to have been originally planning for the PS5 launch. As of this April, Sony was reportedly expecting to produce five to six million consoles by the end of March, fewer than it released for the PS4 launch in 2013. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, caused the company to sharply increase its forecasts as the gaming industry boomed in popularity.

Meanwhile, Sony will be holding an online PS5 event on Wednesday where it is likely to reveal the final price and offer date for the console, which comes in two variants: one with a disc drive and one without. Till pricing details are confirmed, it’ll be hard to speculate on whether Sony will have enough supply to meet increasing demands.

Facebook pledges to cut greenhouse gases as a boosts its climate commitments

Facebook today pledged to remove greenhouse gases and purchase enough renewable energy and offsets to cancel out carbon dioxide emissions from its global operations this year. The company however, still pumps out greenhouse gases.

The company’s new pledge to reach “net zero” carbon emissions puts it in motion to offset its global power consumption and planet-heating pollution by investing in renewable energy projects that capture and store carbon dioxide.

it’s announcement puts the company in the middle of the stage when it comes to climate commitments from Big Tech. Also, Netflix similarly invests in renewable energy to offset its electricity use but hasn’t set hard goals to zero out emissions in the future. Apple wants to cut down its emissions to net zero by 2030, and Amazon by 2040. In comparison, Google has been deleting out its carbon emissions with offsets since 2007 and announced yesterday that it plans to become the first major company to power its operations with carbon-free energy by 2030.

Read Also: Facebook is building a gaming app to take over Twitch, YouTube.

Facebook’s CO2 output has decreased every year since 2017 — and the company isn’t likely to pump out as much greenhouse gas pollution as companies producing gadgets or hardware. Facebook’s data centers and offices generated roughly 251,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases last year compared to 616,000 in 2017, according to its sustainability report.

Facebook also launched a “Climate Science Information Center” that’s available to users in the US, Germany, the UK, and France starting from today. It will soon bring the information center to more countries in the future. It’ll will have information from creditable sources like the United Nations panel of climate scientists and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In August 2019, Facebook removed a “false” rating from an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner; an independent fact checker for Facebook had initially flagged the op-ed as “highly misleading” because it included inaccurate information and cherry-picked data on climate change.