If you’re looking to use game streaming apps on your Apple devices, the rules have just become a bit less restrictive to do so.
Apple is updating its App Store policies to relent on a longstanding ban on game streaming apps. Developers are now allowed to submit a single app that can contain a catalog of games, where the game code is running off a server. This allows for services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming to finally release native apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Before this, Apple required developers to submit a separate app for each game individually, which created an enormous amount of work and was seen as largely untenable. The change itself applies globally, and while game streaming apps must conform to the usual laundry list of the other traditional App Store rules, the path is now clear for them to exist on the App Store at all.
Apple has also lent new capabilities to help enhance the discovery of streaming games and other mini-apps like chatbots or plugins. These changes will also accommodate supporting separate in-app purchases for the first time, such as a subscription to an individual chatbot.
Prior to these changes, the Xbox Cloud Gaming app was previously only available through the iOS Safari web browser, due to Apple’s rules. Following the changes, developers like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Netflix) will be able to create a native app.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac