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Yes and no. They had to put the version identifier somewhere to avoid sorting problems or parsing problems, so I think that putting somewhat in the middle is a good tradeoff.

Let’s see:

• There is already Steam for Mac, which a great catalog and sales.
• The only appeal of an App Store game is cross-platform… in Apple devices.
• Consoles (with controls) are cheaper than any Apple product compatible with AAA games. (This includes the Steam Deck).
• There are no platform-selling exclusives.
• There is no exclusive hardware features.
• Major most-played games are not available OOTB: PUBG, Roblox, Rocket League, Genshin Impact, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, CSGO2.

Yeah, I get the sentiment: why. But Apple has to start with something, and if they want people to buy games they will need a bigger catalog, and for that they need to keep their porting tools easier to implement.

Well, the thing is that 3 years looks like “too long” but eventually the spec is held by the timeframe of having actual silicon. Even if it’s not 1 year or 2, at least is not 5 or 7.

That’s probably the problem of standards. Everyone has to agree to a new spec, instead of a company offering double the PCI Express bandwidth and latency that, low and behold, only works on their hardware and will charge for royalties.

3 years look like a lot, but it’s cheaper than vendor lock-in, which everyone has afraid of since is in that moment your business is controlled by other business.

To slam its puss-ahem I mean, to thoroughly test their release.

This could backfire into something Google don’t want: everyone using adblockers.

Imagine everyone installing adblockers just to skip YouTube’s obnoxious ad rolls, just to also block most Internet ads.

Suddenly, having an adblocker becomes mainstream like wearing socks.