Apple is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to secure new games for its forthcoming Apple Arcade subscription service, with its total budget likely to exceed $500 million, according to the Financial Times.
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The report, citing several people involved in the project's development, claims Apple is incentivizing developers by spending several million dollars each on most of the more than 100 games that have been selected to be available on Apple Arcade when the service launches later this year.
While the report claims games on Apple Arcade will not be available on Android or through other subscription-based gaming services, it says developers will be permitted to release their games on PCs or other games consoles such as the Nintendo Switch or PlayStation after a few months of exclusivity.
Apple Arcade will feature titles from well-known brands such as Disney, Sega, Lego, Cartoon Network, and Konami, as well as indie studios such as Snowman, Annapurna Interactive, WayForward, and Klei Entertainment.
Apple has yet to reveal pricing for its Arcade service, slated to launch in fall 2019 in more than 150 countries across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. All games on Apple Arcade will be fully-featured, all-you-can-play experiences, with no ads and no in-app purchases necessary.
Apple Arcade will be accessible via a dedicated tab in the App Store.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)If a company is using their money and resources to bolster their platform I do t have any problem with it.
You only say that because you use the platform in question. Have some empathy.Speaking as a consumer this platform exclusivity is sad.
If a company is using their money and resources to bolster their platform I do t have any problem with it.You only say that because you use the platform in question. Have some empathy.
No, I'm pretty sure he was saying it like he said it. No other company is going to do this. Microsoft isn't going to give you a few million bucks to develop a game and then let you publish it for Sony. If the companies want the money and want to be featured in the service and get a cut of the service revenue then they need to play by the rules. Apple is doing this to help produce good content that will hopefully replace the freemium garbage that is running rampant in the App Store. They're doing this to clean up their platform and the mess they created with IAPs all those years ago. I doubt this will really change their revenue much because it will just take away from freemium games where they already get a cut of the revenue. Google is free to produce something similar. Heck, even someone like Valve or similar could build a service like this for Android and I bet they probably will at some point. It's all fair game. Some of these smaller studios wouldn't even be making these games without this funding shot in the arm.While the report claims games on Apple Arcade will not be available on Android or through other subscription-based gaming services, it says developers will be permitted to release their games on PCs or other games consoles such as the Nintendo Switch or PlayStation after a few months of exclusivity.
Keeping the games off Android sounds like a bad idea. That means popular multi platform games likely won't show up in Apple Arcade.Can you imagine if Rovio had to choose between having Angry Birds on everything, or just putting it in Apple Arcade?
It's nice to see that they're not trying to force developers to abandon real consoles. But they shouldn't try to keep the games off Android. The marketing should be "Play games on Apple Arcade because it's better (no ads, no in-app purchases)." Not "Play games on Apple Arcade because we won't let developers publish games on Android."