Apple announced a subscription based service for games (iOS mobile, Apple TV set top box, and Mac desktop) called Apple Arcade at their media event today (March 25th). The subscription will cover at least 100 titles initially and allow them to be played across all platforms in the Apple ecosystem either online or completely offline. The subscription will be the only charge and will cover all updates; games will have no ads or in-app purchases. Family Sharing will allow multiple members in a family to also play (multiplayer titles). Apple made no mention of the pricing (the service will launch in the Fall of 2019 in 150 countries).
With that said, this service is aimed at the demographic that is solidly in Apple’s ecosystem; unfortunately, there are niches/genres of titles that are just not (and will never be) natively available for iOS devices or Mac desktops (like most of the MMO titles I’ve written about here will never be written for the Mac). Apple as a company was always tepid when it came to games that really pushed the performance envelope where the companies insistence with using sub-par mobile focused GPU’s in their desktop products along with requiring developers to jump through hoops due to outdated and/or depreciating API’s (as what happened with OpenGL which is being phased out in favor or Apple’s own Metal), makes it easy for a lot of AAA studio’s to de-prioritize the Mac and to focus on just a Windows client and/or console. Unfortunately, there’s a plethora of mobile focused games on iOS which means yes, more depthless mobile MMO’s and adventure games infiltrating the libraries of players.
This service also won’t do much to advance the state of gaming on Apple based products because of the limited selection. As someone that used to formerly play a limited number of titles on a Mac before the Intel switchover, I’m familiar with the sad state of affairs when it comes to gaming on a Mac (it’s not worth it). After the switch to Intel, dual booting to a Windows install allowed running those games but at that point, it makes more sense to just get/build your own dedicated gaming PC (I went the turnkey route with SFF rigs). For those who have never considered a Mac a decent gaming platform, there is absolutely nothing to see here with this service. And again, the advent of touch based gaming has resulted in the proliferation of titles that make you go meh. PC players may eventually become a dying breed of dinosaurs but I just cannot find enjoyment in playing mobile based/designed games. Despite this service covering all Apple platforms, the Mac counterparts will end up being mostly mobile inspired that is adapted to the Mac using whatever IO abstraction layer SDK Apple concocts. I mean the bulk of Apple devices out there are iOS ones so touch based. And then there is the Apple TV which uses a small controller with a small area for touch input and has some ridiculous content storage requirements due to package deployment sizes as well as limited on device storage (32 or 64GB). So I don’t expect to see designs that target a desktop environment first because it’s about eyeballs/reach, and with so many who don’t own a PC that is adequate enough to run a lot of games but do own a newer mobile smart device, the devs are just following where the numbers and potential money are.
On a wider note, I am not a fan of this notion of subscription based gaming which tries to lure you with a number of titles for one single cost. This reminds me of paying for cable television with hundreds of channels that most people never watch. With regards to Apple and their onerous (for content providers) revenue sharing terms (those terms are great for me wearing the Apple shareholder hat BUT sucks for many outside of that), I’m wondering how the developers (who will be signing on to this as creators) will be making money without some sort of subsidy from Apple. Let me back up a bit; Apple will initially be helping those folks who sign up early on with development costs, promotion, etc. But this says nothing about the long term viability. I can see if millions of people sign up for the service and stick with it for the long haul but I don’t see the draw of Apple Arcade even for the average casual gamer; especially when there’s a sizable demographic that are fine with free/freemium. There’s also many who balk at the $.99 and $1.99 titles and will just ignore the subscription service regardless of the pitch that Apple is pushing out (ad free, all the updates for free, no tracking, etc).
tl;dr – I’m not impressed with what Apple announced today for their gaming service and doubt it will have any meaningful impact on their services revenues (I can see this going the way of Apple’s other prior half-assed gaming efforts). I’m also tired of this notion of “curation” by so called experts that really have zero clue as to the nuances of things that I may personally find enjoyable (which is especially true with game titles that I play).
Disclosure: I do own common shares of AAPL (Apple)
