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Apple Announces 'Apple Arcade' Cross-Platform Subscription Games Service With Access to Over 100 Titles
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Exactly. And the transition to ARM makes it even more difficult. Apple Arcade seems to be either a very naive or a very desperate endeavour unless I overlooked something.
None of the best XBOX games are available on game pass, for a reason. It will be interesting to see which games are included in Apple Arcade. I’ll go out on a limb and say probably most, at least initially and then the best ones will leave the subscription… or Apple will increase the subscription price… or add another tier. Anyway, I’ve been an Apple user a long time and none of what was announced today is even remotely tempting for me. I don’t (have time to) read magazines, I don’t (have time to) play games - and we have an Xbox at home! -, I don’t need another credit card, I’m not interested in TV series mostly because I don’t (have time) to watch TV and I’m mostly interested in LIVE sports events like Olympics, World Cup, NFL, NCAA, soccer and I can watch many of these on my over-the-air channels for free. I’m barely making use of my Apple Music subscription and I just cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription (video offering is crappy!), same for Netflix (just old movies), I’m currently testing Sling for a few months. When I want to watch a movie, I rent it from iTunes, Vudu, whatever is the cheapest.
Not necessarily. SceneKit games will likely be ported to the Mac via Marzipan, but what about Unity and other engines? They may use Marzipan or may decide to write a separate app for the Mac.
My guess is they need iOS 13 to deploy this kind of subscription for apps, as you'll be able to download the game to play offline but you won't buy the game, so it will be distributed in a different way. That applies to macOS and tvOS as well. That to me is the main reason why they launch the service this fall
Not interested in any subscriptions at all. I don't rent, I either buy commercial products, or use open source products, but always with a permanent right to keep a copy and to use the product forever. Of course the trend is that you won't own anything and that you should be happy with it because you'll be more ecological, more green, more socialist, more leftist, but I don't join trends, I select what's good, not what's trendy.
Finally some proper games for AppleTv! I suppose this means they will make it easier for third party producers of controllers, leading to more development and competition in that market too. If they get enough momentum on this and get quality games on a quality service I'm paying.
So... and this is really significant imho, does anyone know if the games that are available through the 'Arcade' subscription will also be available as individual purchases in the App Store?
If not, then Apple will have truly killed the App Store for games (it's barely hanging in there now).
It wouldn't surprise me if they were moving to a subscription-based, no one owns anything model.
If not, then Apple will have truly killed the App Store for games (it's barely hanging in there now).
It wouldn't surprise me if they were moving to a subscription-based, no one owns anything model.
Apple is basically leveraging on its huge iOS market share to bring games to the Mac. Games you otherwise would not have been able to enjoy at all.
And when your A-series chips are on par with mid-level i5 chips in terms of performance, I fail to see how that is a bad thing.
My gut is feeling that many of these game devs are focusing first on iOS. Maybe at some point it will come to Mac, but I wouldn’t bank on it
To me, the Arcade+ is a way for devs to get their game more visibility and build more notoriety for their company. It’s easy for a good (or bad) game to get swept under the rug when it’s released due to saturation.
Then you got the games that promote adverts with Vungle and other similar services. Surprisingly, I find a lot of good games thru those means.
Am I missing a joke here?
Blizzard games have had pretty good Mac support since Vanilla WoW.
I’m super excited about this.
#1 for hopefully putting a colossal dent in the mobile f2p disaster that’s infected mobile gaming
#2 for actually leveraging these A series chips with games that are worthy of them
#3 for reestablishing gaming on AppleTV for super casual gamers who won’t ever buy a console, with more meaty games where controllers are required.
#4 for doing all of this while being able to play on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and AppleTV (Switch like functionality) along with iCloud support
I guarantee that games will be made on this service that is going to break a few molds as far what the current reputation for mobile gaming is, though those smaller games will exist as well. And that’s fine! All consoles are like this now to some degree, especially the Switch.
#1 for hopefully putting a colossal dent in the mobile f2p disaster that’s infected mobile gaming
#2 for actually leveraging these A series chips with games that are worthy of them
#3 for reestablishing gaming on AppleTV for super casual gamers who won’t ever buy a console, with more meaty games where controllers are required.
#4 for doing all of this while being able to play on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and AppleTV (Switch like functionality) along with iCloud support
I guarantee that games will be made on this service that is going to break a few molds as far what the current reputation for mobile gaming is, though those smaller games will exist as well. And that’s fine! All consoles are like this now to some degree, especially the Switch.
Really? Apple defender? You asked what Apple was thinking by creating Apple Arcade and compared it to xBox Game Pass at $10/month. I in no way said that Apple would be successful, or that it was going to kill PC/Console gaming with Apple Arcade.... nope did't say that at all. Just for a refresher here's what I did say:
Yeah, so basically I answered your question with a snarky attitude because I assumed anyone with a brain would be able to answer the question of what Apple is thinking. But just to spell it out for you, because you obviously are too close minded to understand.... They are thinking: "Hey we have all these people with devices and they're just playing all these free games all the time. It's hard for them to see what great paid games are out there because they are always overshadowed by the free stuff... So what if we create a pretty package of paid exclusive to iOS games and charge them a recurring fee to access all of these games whenever and wherever they want."
I would have though this was obvious, but basically Apple is thinking about.... wait for it. Money.
This is version 1 of an Apple product. Since Apple has said the future of the company is services, they will stick with this through several versions at least. Therefore, they will learn and improve this over the coming years.
I have a bunch of console controllers (Sony and Microsoft) that all work wonderfully on my windows gaming machine.
But I can forget about them on iOS unless I jailbreak the device (in which case they work flawlessly). There is zero reason to block them from working except Apple didn't get their bribe from the manufacturer to support them.
For obvious reasons, the OEM PS and XBox controllers are among the best controllers on the market, and there's about 100 million of each controller in the wild. Yet Apple won't allow you to use them for no other reason except...apple.
With this attitude and customer hostility, they will never succeed in the gaming market. I can buy an inferior controller from $65 on Amazon that will work with Apple products, or put the $65 towards a windows laptop or android tablet that will support the superior controllers I already own. Gamers just don't need apple.
Unless version 2 pulls a total 180 on how Apple runs the business, apple arcade will make Ping and Newton look like smash hits.
You're right. They don't.
But I really don't think Apple is trying to directly target PC/Console gamers with this platform (at least not right now). The much easier target market for them is the casual / free-to-play gamer. They already have millions of people playing games on iPhones and iPads around the world. If they can get these people to convert into a recurring revenue stream via subscription that's a huge win for Apple.
Also... Apple rarely stops at generation one of a product. Arcade will be refined, updated, and iterated on once they start to figure out what works and what doesn't.
Hmmm. The more I stewed on this the more it's kind of what I wanted, albeit as always the Apple-ized version of it.
I've been saying since it launched that they were sitting on a heckin powerful microconsole with the ATV, and now that they dropped the wand controller requirement it could make for a nifty microconsole. But the software wasn't there, so I wished for them to fund some exclusive games.
With Arcade, they are funding exclusives, and those games are said to work (or be able to be made to work) across macOS, iOS, and TVOS. So if any of the exclusives are good, I did kind of get the push from them for ATV games, and it running on macOS come to think of it is an unexpected bonus.
I've been saying since it launched that they were sitting on a heckin powerful microconsole with the ATV, and now that they dropped the wand controller requirement it could make for a nifty microconsole. But the software wasn't there, so I wished for them to fund some exclusive games.
With Arcade, they are funding exclusives, and those games are said to work (or be able to be made to work) across macOS, iOS, and TVOS. So if any of the exclusives are good, I did kind of get the push from them for ATV games, and it running on macOS come to think of it is an unexpected bonus.
Have you looked at game pass lately? There are a lot of great games on there. They even have every Halo game but reach on there. That alone is worth 10.00 a month. They have the rocksteady batman games on there, Doom, all of the Fable games, all the gears of war games, hitman, mortal combat x, quantum break, sea of thieves. Plus every Microsoft published game will be on there on launch day when released. It has over 200 games...It's anything but a waste of money?
He was saying that blizzard has been good and without them it would be a graveyard. He wasn't putting down blizzard