I agree with you.
Apple wouldn’t be able to dictate terms to those companies, which is likely why Apple hasn’t involved them.
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Apple Canceling Some Apple Arcade Game Contracts to Focus on Hit Games That Will Draw Subscribers
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I agree with you.
Apple wouldn’t be able to dictate terms to those companies, which is likely why Apple hasn’t involved them.
Those companies are not going to give Apple exclusive rights to a decent game for $1-5 million. You're right, the entire model and concept of Apple Arcade is just wrong.
True…
But Apple has so much bloody money laying around they could get unbelievably serious about this if they wanted to…
It is frustrating to watch them dink around with silly little artsy games with very little depth and sort of meh gameplay.
How does it have more puzzle elements? Is there game-play other than matching patterns and spending XP to be better at matching?
These types of games always seem to boil down to matching different types of things, having match against something multiple times, and moving things to a point on the screen. All while something else tries to disrupt you by making generally predictable changes to the board. If you have trouble you can use a power-up to increase your chances of winning.
It sounds like you are saying there is more than this.
I agree many games on PSN and Xbox Game Pass aren't comparable to what's on Apple Arcade, but you also can't run those on mobile platforms like phones and tablets. I think that Apple's approach letting the games be played on all their devices is a nice idea, but of course it means they also have to be adjusted to the weaker hardware of those platforms. At the same time strong graphics performance is and has been relatively scarce among Apple computers – if that were to change with Apple's upcoming ARM Macs – and if eGPU support continues to improve – I think Apple could eventually be part of the game.
I also think it'd be nice to see some bigger so called AAA games like there is on Xbox Game Pass. Maybe also follow their model which lets also lets you buy individual games that are one the service.
All I need to play PS4 games on my phone is a good wifi connection - remote play works pretty well, especially when you pair the controller with the iOS device 💁🏻♂️
Apple Music sucks. Spotify is easily 10 years ahead in curating music a person would actually like. Same goes for Alexa vs Siri.
Apple is just so far behind it’s like listening to stories of your neighbors grandma using a rotary. Cool, but let’s focus on tomorrow’s tech.
I wouldn’t count AMD out. They just don’t keep any lead for very long. I think Nvidia should have kept on their macOS driver development instead of a glorified remote desktop service.
The Intel mini at least packs a punch with some real I/O, and eGPU got pretty stable under Mojave. Steam was pretty awesome until Catalina axed the apps. I at least understand why with the recently announced direction.
This brings the Apple Silicon to mind. Right now, the developer preview Mini is an incredibly underwhelming device. USB-C and HDMI 2.0. I hope whatever they are working on for actual release makes up for it in serious benchmarks.
Not really.
I am for example a playstation and switch owner. But I also own an appletv, iPad, Mac.
If there are enough quality games on the Apple platforms, I might just not bother with a new console. I'm sure I'm not alone.
The AppleTV 4k hardware is already stronger than the Nintendo Switch, and that's been out for some years at this point. Controllers work, they just need more games to make use of them and maybe a first party controller that pairs with devices as seamlessly as their AirPods.
Then again, outside of trackpads, most Apple peripherals suck, so perhaps license the bluetooth tech to Logitech?
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"Do this right"?
Bethesda and EA are some of the most customer hostile publishers on the market. AAA games these days are mostly garbage.
Maybe apple doing things differently might get some games that have actual decent or innovative gameplay.
I'd say that the current AAA game development/publishing model is not "right". Development budgets are way too big so nobody will take any risk and we just end up with the next slightly shinier iteration of some tired old formula.
Polytopia and Hexonia would be hard to top and they have really good free play experiences
Yeah, it would, and so would PlayStation Now and Nintendo Switch Online.
I guess the difference is that all these other platforms have games worth paying for whereas games on Apple's platform are pretty meh. They're either lacking adequate depth, or they're too cumbersome to play with just a touchscreen.
I've tried remote play with my PS4 Pro and the input lag was too much even when using Ethernet both on the PS4 and the Mac. But sure, it depends on the game (and of course the person playing) how much tolerance there is for input lag.
But I think we can all agree lower input lag is better – makes the game (especially fast paced ones) feel more tight and controllable.
I don't either but realistically I also don't see AMD beating Nvidia at the high end anytime soon. Nvidia is a shark and they obviously don't make the same mistakes Intel did.
AMD is OK for consoles and mid-level gaming builds but at the high end GPU Nvidia is King.
One thing that I see it's being ignore with this transition to ARM by Apple, is what happens to current Intel Macs? Most of them will be OK to be used for the next 10 years or so. For game developers the current Mac users bases would be more interesting to support vs the upcoming ARM Macs.
In my opinion the transition to ARM will hurt high end gaming on Macs even more.
If working with the big guys won’t produce a hit maybe going to folks like Jonathan Blow (Braid and the Witness) for a platform exclusive would be worthwhile.
Plus there are a lot of “free” games that are better, even with some ads or micropayments. So any games worth subscribing to need to be AAA quality with multiplayer, and constantly updated and added content. Games that are nothing but tapping, waiting or even watered down for touch rarely can match other options.
Exactly. So many genres that have been overdone. Match, merge, gacha, word, cooking...
That's your opinion. I consider myself a gamer and I could not care less about multiplayer. Actually multiplayer is usually an excuse to make a crappy single-player game, so I prefer it not have multiplayer at all. And I also don't care about added content and dlc. The game should be complete and fun when it comes out. Then I can play and enjoy it and move on to another game.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
The way I see it, I'm glad Apple is doing the "Arcade" thing. It adds value to their devices.
Not everyone is a hardcore gamer; I'm willing to bet many GenX'ers like me are mostly interested in casual, fun games and not the life-altering, time-consuming, real-life-fantasy-sims that many AAA games are today.
Younger kids won't (shouldn't?) be playing GTA or Doom or Red Dead...but games like Abzu, Journey, Hollow Knight (maybe), etc should be both fun and appropriate.
Thus, I think there is room for Arcade to exist, if the price is right. And it's more immediate than Gamefly, and no additional hardware is required.
It should not try to compete directly with consoles or PCs, it should supplement them.
Not everyone is a hardcore gamer; I'm willing to bet many GenX'ers like me are mostly interested in casual, fun games and not the life-altering, time-consuming, real-life-fantasy-sims that many AAA games are today.
Younger kids won't (shouldn't?) be playing GTA or Doom or Red Dead...but games like Abzu, Journey, Hollow Knight (maybe), etc should be both fun and appropriate.
Thus, I think there is room for Arcade to exist, if the price is right. And it's more immediate than Gamefly, and no additional hardware is required.
It should not try to compete directly with consoles or PCs, it should supplement them.
According to this video Apple seems to be working with ARM to produce high performance graphics for use in their products and he's talking about Apple wanting them to be used for AAA gaming titles (among other things):
This is from a guy who already in October last year seemed to know pretty much about Apple moving the Mac to ARM:
Interesting, huh?
This is from a guy who already in October last year seemed to know pretty much about Apple moving the Mac to ARM:
Interesting, huh?
I wonder if you do that using Magic Keyboard - as for me it was a painful experience. Hopefully iOS14 will fix some of those things.
Interesting, huh?
Not really.
Anyway building a high end GPU without infringing upon Nvidia's/AMD's Patent is impossible.
With the complexity of PC graphics, it’s impossible to build a graphics processor without infringing on any number of patents from both AMD and NVIDIA, because the two companies dominate the PC graphics technology. Both companies have so many patents on graphics that it makes no sense for them to sue each other, because the patent arms race is analogous to the Cold War nuclear race between the United States and the Soviet Union - each company has enough patents to assure mutual destruction in the courts. Intel, on the other hand, has lagged on graphics, being traditionally more of a CPU company. As such, Intel lags on graphics IP and in order to build integrated graphics, Intel has no choice other than to infringe on a number of existing graphics patents.
Intel does has a license agreement with AMD and that allows them to build dedicated GPUs.
Subscription services could not rely on a "single killer game" anyway because people are paying monthly.
They will have to regularly churn out killer games if they want people to stay.
They only have to
1. Continue 32-bit support
2. Support Vulkan
and they could have had the games the other platforms have.
But Apple doesn't seem to be interested in desktop level games and is obsessed with control. So here we are.
I wasn’t expecting ONE killer game, but a bunch of them actually. There is none so far.