Companies turning everything into a subscription model to milk customers is getting ridiculous.
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Apple Arcade Hasn't Received Any New Games in Two Months
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I see this as the best use of the subscription model as a means to potentially fix mobile gaming.
As more people subscribe, Apple can fund more and bigger budget games, all without the ads & IAP you just can’t escape otherwise.
As more people subscribe, Apple can fund more and bigger budget games, all without the ads & IAP you just can’t escape otherwise.
Including milk customers! (I live in a neighborhood where there’s still a milkman that delivers, and they don’t deliver for free, so…)
I’d be curious if you have a source on that. It seems Arcade developers generally aren’t allowed to share the details of their contracts w/ Apple, but I’ve gotten the impression those contracts usually involve some kind of additional money to fund the maintenance & content updates that we keep seeing. I couldn't be surprised if the later payments were scaled based on activity levels.
Sneaky Sasquatch has somehow been able to release major content updates every couple months with a 2-man team at RAC7.
That's a good point. Grindstone gets updates about every three months, and there is no way anyone would be doing all that work for free.
While no developer has come right out and talked about how they're being paid, industry analysts and interviews with several game developers when Arcade first launched in 2019 that strongly hinted at this approach, with one saying it was more like "the Netflix model of providing and paying for content," and saying that it wasn't at all based on engagement metrics like Google Play's approach (The Verge).
According to The Financial Times, Apple also reportedly budgeted over $500 million at launch to fund 100 games up front, which works out to spending an average of $5 million per developer.
That said, these are obviously ongoing contracts — in fact Apple even cancelled a few last year — and as part of that Apple must be continuing to pay developers in some way to release updates. However, from everything I've heard, this is still not directly based on engagement or play time.
Presumably, Apple is taking some of these metrics into account internally — it's obviously much more likely to keep paying developers to release updates for more popular titles than ones that aren't drawing in subscribers — but every developer who has commented at all has made it clear that it isn't a revenue-sharing or metrics-based model from their perspective. In fact some have complained that Apple doesn't provide them enough insight into how popular their games are — they get little more than raw download numbers, which of course says nothing about how many people are actually playing their games.
This was on AppleArcade on April 2nd. I’ve noticed that most people say it is new are from outside the US. I would guess that song licensing issues delayed the release in some countries.
FYI, Divinity 2 is on the iPad and is quite good. However it is limited to only the new ‘square edge’ iPads Pro and Air.
So a buddy of mine makes an Apple Arcade game. He’s had his game downloaded 2 million times as of last month. I’d tell you how much he was paid but you may faint.
I am not an Arcade subscriber but, that seems like a long time to be without an update. Is it because there is so much to choose from, or just a temporary lull?
Every developer contract is probably different, and games like Butter Royale and Wonderbox will need higher ongoing contracts to cover server costs than the offline games.
For this all to work to improve mobile gaming, I want the new Arcade developers to keep getting more lucrative contracts. Ideally, other services like GameClub would start competing for these indie exclusives and driving up the prices.
For this all to work to improve mobile gaming, I want the new Arcade developers to keep getting more lucrative contracts. Ideally, other services like GameClub would start competing for these indie exclusives and driving up the prices.
So…
1. WWDC is next week 🙄
2. Only 1 day ago https://www.cnet.com/news/8-games-we-cant-wait-to-play-on-apple-arcade/
3. A friend signed for a new game a few week ago. He already has one with arcade.
1. WWDC is next week 🙄
2. Only 1 day ago https://www.cnet.com/news/8-games-we-cant-wait-to-play-on-apple-arcade/
3. A friend signed for a new game a few week ago. He already has one with arcade.
It's a long time without an update, I think mainly because they dropped a bit too many in the 32-game bombshell in April. I play something from Arcade every day, and I still haven't tried all of those April releases.
Going to try these games now. I did several searches online looking for popular games to try out and most were meh.
Over 200 games spanning multiple genres hardly equates to “not much there” or “a barren wasteland”.
It is becoming ridiculous. Last I looked, for just the game Tetris, it’s offered only on a weekly subscription basis that would cost you $260 a year if you were silly enough to do it.
I would imagine they also get pings to the Game Center logins, as well, so that’d be pretty 1 to 1, right?
I can’t find a link now, but I do believe there’s an “engagement” part of the agreement which rewards developers for creating games that make people want to come back and play again and again. Some of the games, granted, are beautiful little one and done’s that we would likely never have seen made as they wouldn’t have been financially viable otherwise. But there are a lot that have a “come back to” factor.
The entire App Store needs an over haul. When I click Top Paid I don’t want to see Top Free as well on the left side taking up half my iPad screen. And vice versa. They need a search function that can look up apps by date added to the App Store, most stars, most reviews etc to help people refine their searches. The front page needs to be partitioned into nice blocked quadrants of definite app types i.e. Utility, Games, Entertainment etc once clicked a new front page appears and then you can have their garbage: ‘what were playing’, ‘for you page’, ‘get started’, ‘try something new’ etc crap related to THAT CATAGORY. And even then those ‘insert blank’ genre ideas they have like ‘for you’ etc are pure garbage and needs to go out. Just go on your iPad and search the app stores main page yourself and open your eyes. Scroll (forever) downward and see how useless to app discovery the entire home page and AppStore is! Apple Arcade is a joke. I’m sorry. Other than KOTOR 2 and GTA SA plus a dozen others there are absolutely zero AAA games. I’m sick of cutesy tap tap swipe games!! IN 2021!!!!!!!! I go to the Top 100+ games and they are the same games from 2014 basically!! The stagnation is unreal. And the discovery process is infuriating. And the apps being put out are all different takes on the same thing. I swear if I see one more Middle Ages idk whatever! I will freak!!!!!! Oh wait I’m freaking now. UGH!!!!!
Apple can fund bigger and better games now. Why wait? Do it now in order to attract more subscribers.