Games Leaving Apple Arcade Soon Won't Be Playable [Updated]

[H2SO4]

This entire subscription based gaming, in-app purchases, loot boxes etc is complete joke in both console and mobile. Steam and Playstation with some exclusives is still the reliable platform true to the original gaming experience. There were many good games on iOS all stopped working due to Apple's lack of backwards compatibility support, a way to force developers to pay the yearly 99$ fee.

Not just games. I think subscription is not only here to stay but will expanded to places you never even thought of.............
Will keep both your bottom and your wallet hot; BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK - BBChttps://www.bbc.com › news › technology-62142208

 

[Eorlas]

gaming in general largely sucks these days.

LOL

WHAT?

i avoided the jailbreak thread because i know some MR readers are…fascinating to say the least. but kudos to you, i was not expecting this gem of entertainment.

do please go on

 

[Osxguy]

This is why I hate the subscription model. You don’t own anything… it’s like hi I’d like to buy a vowel oh who am I kidding. Id like to rent a vowel.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

This is why I hate the subscription model. You don’t own anything… it’s like hi I’d like to buy a vowel oh who am I kidding. Id like to rent a vowel.

Wonder if Pat would give half price for renting it

 

[jollydogfellow]

LOL

WHAT?

You heard what he said.
Why would that be so outrageous?

For one, game mechanics are pretty standardised these days compared to the times leading up to the late 90s.

You simply don't get the experimentation and the crazy game designs that a 10-person studio could afford to try during a 10-year economic boom.
The technological side of things is also not nearly as exciting.
You must realize that 4 years went between Quake and Quake III, and that 3 years went between Gabriel Knight and the fully FMV Gabriel Knight 2, with another 3 years leading up to the fully 3D Gabriel Knight 3.
During that time, technology made several giant leaps.
Stuff like CD-ROM, GPUs, 3D sound and force feedback appeared out of nowhere.

Split screen gaming is dead, and online gaming doesn't have the same "community" feeling with clans, enormous LAN parties happening every now and then.

Entire genres are pretty much dead -- graphical adventures, flight simulators.

Most high-budget titles are more polished, true.
But more fun, more creative compared to 10-15 years ago?
That's debatable.

 

[B4U]

I have all three of those cars for the legendary cars trophy, and have got the platinum, just by playing the game. I usually play GT7 for 20-30 mins a day, run one of the races which pays out around 800,000 credits, and pick up the free daily marathon ticket. I currently own 241 of the 433 cars available in the game, plus duplicates for tuning/engine swaps, and have around 30 million credits in the bank ready to pick up a final few legendary cars, and for the free monthly content drops. As someone who owns every GT game, GT7 is one of the easiest to accumulate cars and credits - the menu books give you nearly 100 cars for free. The only thing I have the time and the patience for is... playing the game and enjoying it.

GT Sport begs to differ.
The daily marathon give you a car daily.
GT7 gives a daily ticket which is credits majority of the time.
Easiest to accumulate credits? It is an open secret that GT7 is by far one of the worst ones for that.
Good for you that the platinum is done.
This is getting a little off topic already. But the point is, MTX are cancerous and have already spread to major titles like this where we paid a full retail price. It is getting unacceptable.

Let's not forget the always online requirement.
Once the server shuts down, we are left with a useless game. In other words, we do not own the darn game just like the issue here.

 

[sdf]

There were many good games on iOS all stopped working due to Apple's lack of backwards compatibility support, a way to force developers to pay the yearly 99$ fee.

How many years did you expect Apple to maintain the 32-bit compatibility layer for running iOS apps not re-linked since the iOS 6 SDK (just for example)? That took space on everyone's iPhone and took development effort away from more valuable things, not to mention complicating an OS that's already hard for them to test.

Some of these things just have to go.

 

[groove-agent]

If I had to guess, it's due to the upkeep and maintenance costs.

Apple Music must give the RIAA a fortune, so there's comparatively little use to put towards the service and apps, unless Apple would be willing to subsidize it, which history has shown that they're penny pinchers and don't like to rely on one product to prop up another.

Siri, same thing - It's easy to get a voice assistant to run commands on a local device, when you have billions of transistors running at multi-gigahertz speeds. It's hard to do it at scale without using massive amounts of computing resources, which cost tons of money in the form of data centers, have an ongoing upkeep cost and no possible way to derive revenue from.

And AAA gaming, Apple would need to up the GPU (costs $$$ in the form of higher end silicone in their base model devices) and have a team dedicated to fixing GPU driver bugs, so that they can run AAA games. And the reward is slim, hardly worth mentioning compared to the App store and its recurring subscription fees.

Not sure if I agree with some of this.

Agreed, they can be thrifty when it comes to spending, but they will do it if they have to. Relying on one product to prop up another? Not sure I understand exactly what you mean by this but I think Apple does this with most of their software for example: Logic Pro, Final Cut, Garage Band, iWork etc. This is done to increase the value of the Mac. Look at iCloud which costs tons of money to give people at least 5GB per account. This is used to promote users with multiple devices so that they don't have to manually sync their files across all the devices.

With respect to Siri, the problem is she's pretty dumb. It's easy to stump her, even with the most basic tasks. This is not an infrastructure issue, this is a development issue. She's just dumb and always has been. I can't see Apple just not wanting to develop Siri due to costs. It's hard to say why Siri has not evolved even though she's being used in just about every hardware product they sell.

Apple is slowly ramping up their GPUs with more cores etc. This also isn't a matter of money, it's research and development. They're slowly increasing GPU power with CPU power. It just takes time. Apple has just started with Apple Silicon SOC and I think they'll get there. Apple hardware/ OS is on point for the most part. It's their service sector that needs work.

 

[Thebrochure]

I don't think we've had the option to outright purchase the Apple Arcade games, have we?

Aren't most of the games for sale independently? I thought they were. Either way, I wouldn't buy them, as I don't really spend money on virtual things. I have a few times, like Minecraft back in the day. But it's super seldom.

 

[ackmondual]

I don't even play mobile games much anymore, because I still have a really sour taste in my mouth after Apple dropped the 32-bit support which killed off basically every game I loved playing on my older iOS devices. I easily spent >$400 in purchasing one-time-payment games back then. Many of those games were never re-released or updated, and those that were moved to a microtransaction model. Basically, other than my original iPad 1G that still has the games installed, I have no way to play these games anymore - some I literally can't play at all on a new device, and some I can't play unless I want to be nickel-and-dimed through microtransactions. It especially feels like a stab to have microtransactions forced upon you in a game you once paid $30 for. I'd pay $30 again honestly, but not microtransactions.

Therein lies the problem... it's noble that you're willing to pay $30 for a single, good, iOS game. Problem is, nobody else is. There generally isn't a culture of paying for stuff on the mobile markets (even iOS). Developers have long discovered this, which is why f2p is 86% of where the revenue comes from.

can't wait for the new apple gamestation!

If both M$ and Apple got more into such hardware, I always pictured them calling it...
music player: Apple has iPod. M$ should've called the Zune, xPod
console: M$ has Xbox. Apple can do the Ibox!

 

[ackmondual]

From the story itself:

I'm guessing the post you replied to, there's hinting of "reading between the lines". Perhaps the devs wanted to leave, but Apple is preemptively said that as a "you're not dumping us, we're dumping you".

This is why I hate the subscription model. You don’t own anything… it’s like hi I’d like to buy a vowel oh who am I kidding. Id like to rent a vowel.

Well, if you buy software on iOS, you don't legally own that either. And apps on iOS can very well get yanked, and no longer become playable unless you keep an older device with an older version of iOS around

 

[_Spinn_]

Games can be re-added to the App Store on the same day that they're removed from Apple Arcade, but the games will be uploaded with a new bundle ID. That means Apple Arcade subscribers can redownload the games, but they won't have access to the same game that was available through Apple Arcade.

Hopefully saves can be transferred.

 

[Eorlas]

You heard what he said.
Why would that be so outrageous?



Entire genres are pretty much dead -- graphical adventures, flight simulators.

Most high-budget titles are more polished, true.
But more fun, more creative compared to 10-15 years ago?
That's debatable.

it's outrageous because it's entirely conjecture and has no basis in fact. your response shows why you engorge on that nonsense

MSoft is in a flight simulator hayday right now with a transparent team releasing updates every month. their recent venture was a collab with top gun. you know, the recent indie film that has grossed over 1.2 billion. flight simulators are so dead, 6k people are playing it right now on steam. there are 2 other platforms one can enjoy it on.

PS has so many well-known 1st party exclusive releases over the last 9-10 years. but according to you, games are so dead that HBO felt like making a show after it and giving one of their best director's the reins. not to mention their latest console leaves shelves faster than it makes it there.

games suck so much that CAPCOM gave macOS the time of day and developed their latest Resident Evil entry for it. nearly 100% of 52k+ people on steam think it's fantastic, but hey. what do 52k people mean against your high and mighty self.

stats i shared are check-able to anyone who uses google to find source and doesnt just whine "fake news".

oh, and gaming sucks so much, Apple coded support for the PS4 & PS5, Xbox, Joy-Con, and Switch Pro controllers so anyone who has them can enjoy games with controller support natively on their appleOS platforms.

but yeah. what was said isn't "outrageous".

it's like the people who enjoyed music in the 70s, who hate everything they hear today regardless of what it is, because they chose to abandon fun 50 years ago.

 

[oofio2461]

Today I remembered that Arcade was part of my AppleOne subsciption..

Apple Arcade more like Apple Not a Arcade

 

[nickgovier]

.

 

[nickgovier]

.

 

[jollydogfellow]

it's outrageous because it's entirely conjecture and has no basis in fact. your response shows why you engorge on that nonsense

I'm not reading the rest of your post.
Sorry.

Gran Turismo 7 is a 2022 release with split screen. Return to Monkey Island is due to be released this year. MS Flight Simulator is popular with a wide audience, and DCS World is astonishingly accurate and huge fun. The rumours of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated.

Those are exceptions.
There was a time when you had one major flight simulator, either civilian or combat, coming out per month.
Microsoft alone did a Flight Simulator every two years, with vast overhauls.
Then you had Flight Unlimited, Pro Pilot, etc.
And that's just the civilian flight simulators, then you had a plethora of military ones -- that's just an example of a dying genre, mind you.

Notably, the games you mentioned are all sequels of successful franchises using tried and tested game mechanics.

Kind of like the movies (unless you want to tell me that it is not a fact that the top 10 grossing movies of 2022 are sequels of superhero movies and ancient franchises and, therefore, movies are not nearly as interesting as they were before Marvel unleashed its poison).

Gran Turismo has split screen? Nice. Good.
People will spend much less time on it than they did on Gran Turismo 2's split screen mode.
Kids are busier on instagram these days.

The excitement for Gran Turismo 7 (seven) can't possibly match the utter revolution in realism that was, say, Grand Prix 2, or an insanely hard game like Grand Prix Legends, or the sheer sense of speed that was sought by the cyberpunk-looking Motorhead by means of crazy hardware hacks. Or creative game mechanics such as you'd find in Destruction Derby, Monster Truck Madness, Driver.

It's just the same old Gran Turismo with plus iterative updates.
Meanwhile, rFactor 3 or Geoff Crammond's next simulator are nowhere on the radar.

I frankly don't have time to argue this, you can keep your opinion.

I'm confident in mine.

Economics -- cold hard cash -- dictate that these days evolution of games is iterative at best.
Like the movies.
Moore's law -- or the end thereof -- dictate that you won't ever see a jump like Quake I -> Quake III in the space of a couple years.

Please send budget sheets or tech demos, or a major game with a truly new gameplay my way if you have proof of the contrary.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I'm not reading the rest of your post.
Sorry.



Those are exceptions.
There was a time when you had one major flight simulator, either civilian or combat, coming out per month.
Microsoft alone did a Flight Simulator every two years, with vast overhauls.
Then you had Flight Unlimited, Pro Pilot, etc.
And that's just the civilian flight simulators, then you had a plethora of military ones -- that's just an example of a dying genre, mind you.

Notably, the games you mentioned are all sequels of successful franchises using tried and tested game mechanics.

Kind of like the movies (unless you want to tell me that it is not a fact that the top 10 grossing movies of 2022 are sequels of superhero movies and ancient franchises and, therefore, movies are not nearly as interesting as they were before Marvel unleashed its poison).

Gran Turismo has split screen? Nice. Good.
People will spend much less time on it than they did on Gran Turismo 2's split screen mode.
Kids are busier on instagram these days.

The excitement for Gran Turismo 7 (seven) can't possibly match the utter revolution in realism that was, say, Grand Prix 2, or an insanely hard game like Grand Prix Legends, or the sheer sense of speed that was sought by the cyberpunk-looking Motorhead by means of crazy hardware hacks. Or creative game mechanics such as you'd find in Destruction Derby, Monster Truck Madness, Driver.

It's just the same old Gran Turismo with plus iterative updates.
Meanwhile, rFactor 3 or Geoff Crammond's next simulator are nowhere on the radar.

I frankly don't have time to argue this, you can keep your opinion.

I'm confident in mine.

Economics -- cold hard cash -- dictate that these days evolution of games is iterative at best.
Like the movies.
Moore's law -- or the end thereof -- dictate that you won't ever see a jump like Quake I -> Quake III in the space of a couple years.

Please send budget sheets or tech demos, or a major game with a truly new gameplay my way if you have proof of the contrary.

The problem with the videogames industry is that games cost a ton more to make than they did 20 years ago. It’s well into the millions and for some AAA titles you are looking at hundreds of millions. As such studios are not willing to take a chance on losing money unless a publisher is willing to back them. The other problem is that the industry has consolidated much like the Airline industry decades ago.

Yes I was into flight sims big time in the early 90’s and there also was Spectrum Holobyte with their Falcon 3.0 sims and EA with their Janes Simulations, which one of my favorites was the Longbow series. Unfortunately gamers began to turn away from the genre and publishers began to go after the quick buck.

The same is true for sports games. Each major sport had at least 3-4 different entries from various publishers. Now the landscape has changed because of the cost of investment to make games. This all played well into the hands of mobile gaming as the cost of entry was a fraction of what it takes to make a game for the PC or Consoles.

 

[jollydogfellow]

The problem with the videogames industry is that games cost a ton more to make than they did 20 years ago. It’s well into the millions and for some AAA titles you are looking at hundreds of millions. As such studios are not willing to take a chance on losing money unless a publisher is willing to back them. The other problem is that the industry has consolidated much like the Airline industry decades ago.

Precisely.

Also let's not discount that the economy is what is.

In the late 90s it was much easier to find financial backing, if nothing else because the user base was growing by 50-80 per year worldwide.

Growth was impressive in the US as well: https://www.statista.com/statistics...ith-computer-in-the-united-states-since-1984/

You'd just put together a PowerPoint with concept art and stuff, tell investors something about "blah blah the future blah blah computers blah blah growth" and you got your studio funded for a couple years and be able to do some relatively crazy experiments.

 

[Eorlas]

I'm not reading the rest of your post.

i'll share that then. dont expect to be heard, if you will not hear.

there will be no sorry for it.

 

[KaliYoni]

HyperCard lived from 1987 - 2004. Not exactly a failure. And, ClarisWorks morphed into AppleWorks and lived until the industry as a whole moved away from monolithic "Works" applications. (Remember, there used to be a Microsoft Works too).

But, nice try.

The list was intended to mention some products and services Apple has cancelled, leaving users stranded or abandoned, not as a reflection of success or failure.

 

[KaliYoni]

I'll just leave this here:
[...]
(But don't take this as an endorsement of Apple Arcade by me...)

Don't forget Apple generates about $365 billion in annual revenue. So–back of the envelope–70 million subscriptions x $50/year means $3.5 billion in revenue from Apple Arcade. That doesn't move the financial needle much, even disregarding whatever it costs Apple to market and run the service. Plus Tim Cook is much more of a numbers/quantitative/bottom line manager than somebody who is willing to incur losses for marketing or strategic purposes.

And on a more macro level, I usually discount sell-side analyst estimates because they like to be bullish to help their M&A colleagues get business from the covered company.

 

[KaliYoni]

Doubt it, its a big selling point for the collective apple subscription bundle.

I'm too lazy to dig into AAPL's 10-K and analyst reports right now but my feeling is that iCloud services and, to a much smaller extent, Apple TV+ are bigger drivers for Apple One subscriptions than Apple Arcade.

 

[B4U]

The point is, MTX are irrelevant in GT7, and you can complain about them "spreading" to GT7 but the exact same MTX were in GT6 nearly a decade and two console generations ago. There is plenty to criticise GT7 for (custom lobbies, AI, rolling starts, always online, etc) but MTX are just not one of those things.

That is true for GT6, but that also has much better daily mission content. So, the MTX was not as bad as GT7.
Also, the limited time car rotation and invitation are new to GT7, which are thinly disguises to lure players' real cash. Those were not present in GT6.

 

[ericwn]

This is not true. Apple Arcade games are crafted with love by independent publishers who are committed to delivering unique gaming experiences you wont ever see on any other platform. Apple Arcade is revolutionary in a lot of ways.

Please name 10 revolutionary games on that service that don’t exist elsewhere.