Beautiful, polished game emulator Delta arrives on the App Store — as hell freezes over
In a move that once seemed impossible, Apple has allowed retro game emulators onto the App Store. And today one of the best ones, Delta…
In a move that once seemed impossible, Apple has allowed retro game emulators onto the App Store. And today one of the best ones, Delta, has launched.
The key-word in Apple’s App Store rule change was an allowance of retro emulation. It seems to be the perfect way to allow for discontinued consoles to be emulated on Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad. All without (hopefully) provoking console makers. This might shield Apple from a similar lawsuit to the Nintendo suit against Switch emulator Yuzu, which saw the emulator disappear and cost the developers US$2.4 million in settlement.
It’s definitely a huge example of the kind of power a body like the EU can have — pressuring Apple to open up the iPhone to alternative App Stores. In Europe Delta will only be available on its developers alternative App Store, AltStore PAL. However, due to Apple charging developers a per-install fee for alternative App Store’s in Europe, developer Riley Testut will be passing on the fee to users:
While Apple does waive the CTF for the first million installs of an app, this does not apply to app marketplaces themselves. This means every download of AltStore costs us €0.50, period. This is clearly unsustainable for a free app supported entirely by donations — especially considering we already have millions of users — and we’ve seen a lot of discussion hypothesizing how we could possibly afford this.
To us though, the answer is obvious…we can’t! So instead, we’re going to charge €1.50/year for AltStore PAL and pass the CTF onto our users.
Still, it’s a huge change. I’m personally waiting for torrent apps to be made available on the App Store, but I won’t hold my breath.
