The PS2 apparently saw 3800 release titles. This is compared to 957,390 games in the Apple Store. That is a lot more to compete against to recoup development costs.
Personally, I'd be okay if Apple charged a nominal fee ($100) to do an initial review to add to the app store, another fee for updates ($50) and say 5-10% of margins on a sliding scale... that would hinder some indie dev, but not be outrageous and cover some of that review cost, while not squeezing everyone out like a cartel.
But you’re still stuck with a collapsing ecosystem. $100 isn’t even close to the cost of testing an app in the App Store. The App Store doesn’t scale - you need humans inspecting the program and using it and they need a bit of time to do that. For decent testing you’ll pay $100/hr and it’ll take a few hours at least. I don’t know how you’d do an all-in customer-protecting test round of an app for less than $2000. Which means no more free apps. Or, you continue to subsidize free apps with income from non-free apps which means taking a cut of things like in-app purchases.
I’m not saying that 30% is the right number - it’s probably way too high (maybe?) - but if you want free apps, you can’t let anyone use their own payment processors because it’s a revenue hole and you literally won’t have any revenue that doesn’t go down it.
Do you really believe that Apple is doing much more than automated testing of applications submitted, especially with the many thousands of "free" apps that apple isn't getting any revenue for?
Personally, I'd be okay if Apple charged a nominal fee ($100) to do an initial review to add to the app store, another fee for updates ($50) and say 5-10% of margins on a sliding scale... that would hinder some indie dev, but not be outrageous and cover some of that review cost, while not squeezing everyone out like a cartel.