Malcolm Owen
Apple revealed a considerably larger number of developers participating in the soon-to-launch Apple Arcade service, by showing a larger collection of company logos almost triple the size of what was illustrated at its original announcement.
Originally revealed in March's Services-centric event, Apple Arcade was advised during its initial announcement to have more than 100 games when it launches, with the titles exclusive to the subscription and not available on any other "all you can play" service. During yesterday's iPhone 11 launch event, Apple offered a bit more detail about the developers taking part.
During both the original announcement and Tuesday's update, Apple included a slide showing developers signed up to offer games in Apple Arcade. In the original presentation, the slide consisted of 35 developer logos, including major names like Sega, Disney, Devolver Digital, and Gameloft.
For the latest event, the number of logos used were significantly increased, with 92 developer logos presented on stage. Highlight additions for this round include Capcom, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Bandai Namco. It is unknown how many games each developer is working on for the service, nor how many from each will be available as part of the initial launch wave.
The increase of companies going public with their involvement via the Apple event does not necessarily mean the developers and publishers were not working on the project at an earlier stage. It is likely the developers were more willing to publicize their participation when they were closer to having a release-worthy game that would be available at launch.
It is reported that Apple has spent over $500 million on Apple Arcade alone, securing the development of each launch title and offering incentives to publishers to agree to exclusivity windows.
Arriving on September 19, Apple Arcade will cost $4.99 and will be available to play in 150 countries. For the fee, players will have access to as many of the games as they want to play, without any in-app purchases or in-game advertising, with the games available to play on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and macOS.
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
22 Comments
I think Apple is targeting parents heavily and their fear of kids asking for in app purchases or high bill from them. Here you have decent 5 bucks a month and play....
Instead of outright banning certain titles that do abuse IAP and then having to listen to screams of "monopolistic behavior", this may be a "nicer" attempt to squash those apps out of the store?
You could also see in the presentation from Konami that the versions of the games that were "previewed" in the Apple employee test and by 9-5 Mac were far from finished in terms of the visuals. The Frogger game shown yesterday was much more polished.
I'm wondering how Apple is reimbursing these developers for their games. I'm betting it's based on time spent in the game. A really fair way of doing it would be 5 dollars divided by number of arcade games launched that month, relative to amount of time spent in each game. But then again I thought this would be fair for Apple Music, when it's actually more like one penny for every 50 times you listen to a song... no wonder musicians are starving. Either way, I think Apple Arcade will be a great service. And I really hope that it is some sort of time based pay out scheme. Because if that's the case then I expect tons of companies with old console games to port not terribly enhanced ports, but ports with good control schemes, and then we'll get Square Enix's whole back catalogue real quick :D (Because those games take forever to finish!) I also suspect we'll see a decent number of time wasting puzzle games. Also just putting it out there one or two games that ape the game play mechanics of some freemium games, but don't have IAPs might topple freemium on iOS!