Is Apple really directly competing with Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Microsoft's xCloud, or Google's Stadia?

All of Apple Arcade's games are just mobile games already available in the App store and reviewed individually. The above options are quite a different proposition and Apple's only grievance is they can't review the PC-style game content they are distributing.

It's probably more like Netflix than Apple Arcade, since they are streaming arbitrary content with subscriptions. But games have always been treated different, so again they are not being uniquely targeted.

(Not that I agree with blocking them)

Does Microsoft allow other stores on the Xbox?

What about Sony and Nintendo?

Does Epic allow people to buy stuff for Fortnite from outside of Fortnite and other companies?

I don’t see how that would work per se, but, they do let you process payments for their in game currency via Xbox, Sony, whatever platform.

> I don’t see how that would work per se

Same way as the Steam Workshop and other mod-able games.

I would say no. However, you can still buy a game on disk and play that. A big argument on the anti-apple side is that there's no way around the app store, which isn't true for most consoles. It will be soon though, with more consoles losing disk drives.