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Game Developers Describe 'Smell of Death' Around Apple Arcade
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The real solution would be to axe Arcade and provide a gaming centric storefront where you have actual social features and proper categories for family content, more mature games, paid games, etc. Then heavily curate the store early on for quality. Apple could also invest in a greater push for existing paid games to come to Apple TV and provide an optional controller with the device.
But Apple will never do this. They will forever be an accidental F2P gacha company. Incredibly sad how much potential they’ve squandered
But Apple will never do this. They will forever be an accidental F2P gacha company. Incredibly sad how much potential they’ve squandered
Exactly !
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Actually GamePass even offers 20% discounts on games that will "soon" leave the subscription. Which is common for third party games to do after a year. You can then buy the game at a reduced fee and keep on playing.
Honestly GamePass is one of the best game subscriptions available. Which is why it's so popular.
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I feel like Apple doesn't try too hard. Apple Arcade is just a bunch of simple mobile games, none of them with any real depth. I still feel like Apple should've repositioned Apple TV as a games console. (More powerful SoC, controller in the box, better games) It would be a strong competitor to the XBOX Series S and the Nintendo Switch.
Apple makes far more money on free to play games though. Taking a 15% to 30% cut of every single in app purchase made makes millions if not more over selling premium priced games.
This is absolutely untrue.
Apple Arcade is thriving as the biggest gaming subscription service on earth. Customers love the innocence of pure gaming experiences without pay-to-win and IAPs.
Apple Arcade is thriving as the biggest gaming subscription service on earth. Customers love the innocence of pure gaming experiences without pay-to-win and IAPs.
So more "suits" in charge Steve Jobs warned about? From this and other stories shining light on deteriorating passion at Apple, one has to wonder how long will the magic last? What about the University or whatever the programme was called to sustain the creative/humanist culture at Apple?But that would require Apple to exercise judgement based on an understanding and respect for gaming as an artform and passtime, which they've shown for 40+ years they are physically and philosophically incapable of. Notice how in this article, and the countless developer stories about submitting work to Apple Arcade on X and elsewhere, we constantly hear about the typical Apple black box? No feedback, no understanding of monetization, no vision, no embracing of broader gaming trends, no person who publicly represents the platform with passion (alliteration for the win!)
So of course the service is a crapshoot of winners and losers and a mess of go-nowhere-isms. Every bit of scorn it gets it deserves, in spades.
Apple Arcade not profitable enough? Seems like these devs are being led along with diminishing returns for all their hard work and effort.
If you have kids Apple Arcade was a reason to go iPad vs android tablet. If arcade goes I may consider moving my kids to Android for their next tablets it will be a much more even playing field.
Come to think of it. Maybe game streaming is being allowed bc arcade failed.
Exactly. Apple Arcade is great for families and, one would think, it would foster a love for Apple products for their teen & adult years. Before Apple Arcade, we had our kids on Amazon's kids plan and similarly liked the curated content according to age and no in-app purchasing. But Kindles are a headache to me, I dislike the hardware and OS. But if Apple Arcade goes away, I may be getting 3 Kindles for the kid's entertainment devices and leave the iPads for education purposes. Also, I thought the parent controls on Kindle were actually easier to use than on iPad. I don't know why Apple can't make basic profiles for kids, tweens, and teens and have the devices be easily shareable.
yes. multiple profile support for iPads (and frankly Vision Pro). They support it on education devices so it’s frankly cynical they don’t allow this on home use iPads. Things like this give you a bad taste in your mouth. I enjoy a lot about Apple products but I always feel like the barrier with Apple isn’t ability it’s cynical actions by Apple all the while they are falling behind. They can only coast on intertia for so long.
I recently branched out and got a tab s9 ultra on sale and despite a weaker SOC the user experience in so many ways is far better than my m1 iPad. Starting with multiuser support. Multitasking. drawing software like Krita. And frankly additional app stores like F-droid which remind me of the initial joy of App Store with quality focused software most of which is open source and isn’t littered with bloatware And garbage like most App Store apps nowadays. I still favor Apple but as they stagnate and erode their own advantages in hardware I am starting to have my questions. My taste of freedom with the F-DROID app store have me even more despondent with apples app store polices.
color me interested, and I bet it is good enough. But I just can't bring myself buying a product that was build on stolen technology and build on bland copying. Just can't.
Please back that up with numbers or phrase it like an opinion.
Ah those good old Blizzard games! Did you try StarCraft 2? It's free and it runs decently on macOS.
Further underlines how all of Apple's efforts towards gaming are surface level and only serve to make their subscription service bundles look more attractive and to have exciting, recognisable video game properties to show off whenever they launch new devices and want to highlight improvements to graphical performance of a given device.
I'm assuming the higher ups at Apple have gone over all the possibilities and decided any genuine efforts towards brining gaming to the Apple ecosystem are a loss in both the short and long term.
The gaming industry is cut throat and Apple is not willing to take on the giants like Sony and Nintendo. Fair enough.
What I can't deal with is the perpetual teasing we get every year with Apple insinuating they're making strides towards getting great, AAA games on Macs and Apple devices at large.
It's always less than half-hearted and just annoying at this point.
They should just zip it and keep milking their billions from mobile games.
I'm assuming the higher ups at Apple have gone over all the possibilities and decided any genuine efforts towards brining gaming to the Apple ecosystem are a loss in both the short and long term.
The gaming industry is cut throat and Apple is not willing to take on the giants like Sony and Nintendo. Fair enough.
What I can't deal with is the perpetual teasing we get every year with Apple insinuating they're making strides towards getting great, AAA games on Macs and Apple devices at large.
It's always less than half-hearted and just annoying at this point.
They should just zip it and keep milking their billions from mobile games.
Apple Arcade isn't a bad idea per se, but they really should drop the exclusivity stuff and at least let devs sell their games in the App Store, like the Xbox Game Pass model. They'd probably get a lot more studios on board with that. Not everyone wants to pay for another subscription just so they can play a game or two that interests them.
There are games that in the credits, that say "Produced by Apple". Some of them have made it to Steam. Beyond A Steel Sky, Sayonara Hearts, others I can't recall. Some licensed game as well, Such as TMNT, and OO7, which, I found surprising. Fantasian is being ported as we speak, supposedly. So, I'm guessing "Produced" means funded by Apple. I guess Apple does give the devs the right to go elsewhere after the contract is up. Not sure if the credits in these games will say "Produced by Apple" in their Steam counterparts.
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The current regime just doesn't understand gaming. Gaming is something that happened in spite of them. To be fair they make so much money elsewhere why would they care? It seems they blessed Codeweavers with the right to use the Gaming Toolkit for Crossover. It just goes to show, if Apple can take a shortcut with gaming they will take it. Windows ports on the Mac, as long as it sells machines, that's all that matters.
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You can play Apple Arcade games across devices, such as the phone, Ipad, Apple TV. They seem to have got that right but I hear there are some caveats. For one, I understand Limbo+ is in Apple arcade, but not for TVOS.