When Apple launched its gaming subscription service Arcade in September 2019, it received a lot of attention, as it does with everything the company does. Offering 100 premium (i.e. ad-free) mobile games for a monthly subscription fee of £4.99/£4.99 (currently £6.99), it was an attempt to bring the Netflix business model into the gaming industry. .
It offered an alternative in the mobile gaming market dominated by free and ad-supported games. The dominance of giants like Genshin Impact, Clash of Clans and Candy Crush had previously made it difficult for makers of paid, premium games to find an audience, but Arcade offered a select selection of games that could run on Apple’s devices – iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV – with no ads or in-apps. without purchase. The games also work offline, eliminating the hassle of getting kicked out on the London Underground.
Five years later the market is very different. While legacy platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime are aggressively expanding into Apple’s territory with gaming offerings of their own, consumers are being bombarded with new subscription services across TV, movies and games. So what does this mean for Arcade? Is this still a priority for Apple?
Alex Rofman is Arcade’s senior director and a 15-year Apple veteran who has been involved with mobile gaming since the beginning. “2023 was the bar year for us,” he says. “All of our critical metrics reached record levels. The two highlights for me were the release of Hello Kitty Island Adventure, an incredibly popular IP that has yet to find a home in the gaming world, and What the Car, which won mobile game of the year at the Dice awards last month. ”
Apple’s strategic thinking always comes under a lot of scrutiny; in fact, the company’s transparency about its business decisions has effectively created a layer of technology analysts. However, Rofman describes a fairly simple approach to setting up Arcade. “This was about games that weren’t built around a business model, weren’t built around timers or video ads, were just designed to be fun and engaging,” he says. “We weren’t necessarily looking to replicate the best genres on mobile, we weren’t looking to bring match-three that was better than Candy Crush… We focused on games that wouldn’t have had the opportunity if it weren’t for Arcade. ”
“At Apple Arcade, we can deliver wildly absurd and original premium experiences to a very wide audience… I have a hard time imagining how I can make gamers laugh when they’re interrupted by ads,” says Triband co-founder Tim Garbos. Developer of What the Car.
When we look at Arcade today, we see that innovative games such as Assemble With Care, Card of Darkness, Neo Cab and Mutazione are still on the front page. However, great importance is also given to family games such as Hello Kitty, Tamagotchi and Disney. This makes practical sense for a large demographic of Apple users: tech-savvy parents with bored kids. “‘Free-to-play’ games are not particularly family-friendly,” says Rofman. “They don’t necessarily have to have offensive themes, but parents can’t be comfortable giving their iPad to their kids while they’re playing a free game and not having $100 worth of currency exchanges or whatever.”
This appears to represent a change of direction since the inaugural catalogue, with a growing number of App Store games such as Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride and Threes being added to Apple Arcade. At the time, Apple seems to have thought Arcade would be for fans of great, offbeat indie games they couldn’t find on the App Store: well-reviewed, award-winning games from makers like Annapurna, Die Gute Fabrik, and Devolver certainly dominated the Selection. They are still present but not in the same numbers. Family games came to the fore.
But Rofman wants to reiterate Apple’s commitment to interesting independent films. “Arcade is a place for games that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and I think that’s a really important part of our strategy,” he says. “We fund the development of new games so developers can develop without risk. What’s a Car is a perfect example of this. Another one is Sneaky Sasquatch: Its developer, RAC7, consists of two guys who have been making games together since high school. They don’t want to run a studio. It’s been truly amazing to see the success and growth of this game. It’s perfectly in line with Apple’s values: an incredibly deep, challenging game, but no violence. Nothing offensive. That’s why we think Arcade is an outlet for independent studios with creative, innovative ideas. “This is still important to us and always will be.”
Dissenting voices emerged. In February, industry website mobilegamer.biz published an article in which anonymous developers voiced their frustrations with the service. Some have pointed out that a number of projects have been canceled, which could have a devastating impact for smaller studios. Others claimed that royalty payments for games had dropped and that Apple was not prioritizing the service. Rofman naturally defends the company’s record. “Relevant to the article, developers of games where the player base is growing can expect their bonus pool earnings to increase as well, given that they are interaction-based,” he says. “But as you can imagine, despite the incredibly high quality of our catalog, the player base of not every game in the 200+ game catalog will grow every month.”
He also disputes the idea that Arcade is a victim of Apple’s lack of interest in games. “Games are more important to Apple now than ever,” he says. “You can see this in our investment in silicon. Finally, Macs are more capable of running high-performance games than they were 10 or 15 years ago. And sure enough, with the latest iPhones, you can now run an immersive, high-performance game on a device that fits in your pocket. “I think you’ll continue to see investment and focus on gaming because games are incredible and our devices are great gaming devices.”
In the future, Apple Arcade will feature games made for the company’s much-lauded Vision Pro. The spatial computing device launched with 12 native games, a mix of brand new games and familiar games enhanced with spatial elements. “Spatial play is probably the biggest thing right now,” Rofman says. “If you think about it, there hasn’t been much innovation in the types of games we all play since the invention of touch games. Graphics are better and TVs are getting thinner, but there hasn’t been innovation in terms of gameplay styles and input methods in a long time. Vision Pro opens up a whole new world of possibilities, and we are just at the dawn of it.”
The Vision Pro will remain a niche product for several more years, possibly forever. In the meantime, Apple needs to continue supporting independent developers and showcasing a wider range of new, unlicensed games. Regardless of the problems it faces, Apple Arcade has a vital role in the mobile gaming ecosystem. People put it in contention with Netflix and Amazon, but in terms of content it’s actually heading towards the Nintendo Switch: family-friendly yet challenging games in a safe, heavily curated environment, free of invasive free-to-play monetization. Rofman sees 2023 as a successful year, but Apple Arcade’s ambitions will be truly tested in 2024 as competition heats up and developers struggle.