If you rely on the App Store, Apple has complete control over your distribution channel and take a large cut of your income.

Not only do they have control over your distribution channels, but the rules they impose change over time, forcing people into whatever Apple wants. There was a blog post on HN a while back where an App update was rejected because they failed to hype up the new iPad Pro's or another post where an App was rejected because (by sheer chance) somewhere the description referred to "an unreleased product".

The only real benefit is that it might bring your software in front of a lot of eyes, which, as a big player, you don't really need that much.

I think the "lots of eyes" really only apply to the iOS App Store. sales on the Mac App Store aren't that great from what I've read. As a Mac user I know I never use it, expect when some link from an application website sends me direct to it.

I use it for small utilities, so they are kept up-to-date and I don't need to fish them out when re-installing (which happens unfortunately every year on my corporate Mac)

Just missing a Cloud (Dropbox/iCloud) HomeBrew configuration and I would be set for the essentials.

As parent said big stuff don't need to exposure, and anyway, as a developer most of those stuff wouldn't make it to the appstore anyway.

edit: also forgot licensing. I rather buy it on the AppStore so I'm also avoiding having to fish the license email and/or create an account with whatever utils company.