Apple Arcade Adding Four Games Next Month, Including NBA 2K26

Tuesday September 23, 2025 7:35 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

Apple today announced that four additional games will be added to the Apple Arcade library throughout October, including NBA 2K26 Arcade Edition.

NBA 2K26 Arcade Edition
On Thursday, October 2, three existing App Store games will be added to Apple Arcade, including the classic tile-matching game Dominoes by MobilityWare, puzzle game Piffle by Hipster Whale, and kids game Thomas & Friends: Let's Roll by StoryToys.

NBA 2K26 Arcade Edition arrives to Apple Arcade on Thursday, October 16, ahead of the NBA's 2025-26 regular season, which begins Tuesday, October 21. In the latest version of the game, you can relive the greatest eras in the NBA's history with the new "NBA Eras" option in The Association mode. And in MyCAREER mode, there are new player templates, so you can build players that look just like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or other stars.

As always, team rosters have been updated, too.

Apple Arcade is a subscription service that provides access to hundreds of games across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro. All of the games are free of ads and in-app purchases. In the U.S., Apple Arcade costs $6.99 per month, and it is also bundled with other Apple services in all Apple One plans.

Apple Arcade can be accessed through the App Store, and in the new Apple Games app.

Tag: Apple Arcade Guide

Popular Stories

Apple's App Store Chief Explains Its Push for Premium Games

Tuesday October 20, 2026 8:58 pm PDT by Hartley Charlton

More premium games are launching on the App Store this year than last, Apple's App Store Worldwide head Carson Oliver told Polygon, including more franchises coming from PC and consoles. Oliver said: We've seen incredible growth of games coming to the App Store, in general, with more premium games releasing on the App Store this year than last. While many of those are indies, we're also...

• 40 comments

Apple Arcade Adding These Four Games in December

Tuesday November 10, 2026 7:42 am PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple today announced that an additional four games will be added to the Apple Arcade catalog on Thursday, December 3: LEGO DUPLO Playtime, Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, solitaire(ish), and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown+. In the U.S., Apple Arcade costs $6.99 per month on its own. Alternatively, the service is included with any Apple One bundle subscription. Every game available on Apple...

• 11 comments

Apple Arcade Adds Crossy Road Rush and NBA 2K27

Thursday November 5, 2026 2:12 pm PST by Juli Clover

Apple today added several new games to Apple Arcade, including Crossy Road Rush, NBA 2K27 Arcade Edition, Kami 2+, and Food Stylist - Design Game+. Crossy Road Rush is the latest game in the popular Crossy Road series. Players will make their way across an island obstacle course and unlock fun characters. The game supports up to four players in local or online multiplayer, as well as solo...

• 3 comments

Top Rated Comments

Selena Agna

15 months ago

I still feel like such a sucker when in the beginning I actually believed Apple Arcade would have real games, just because they got Sakaguchi and Konami on board ...

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

turbineseaplane

15 months ago

"Apple" and "Gaming"

The undisputed "Lucy and the Football" champion.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Simmias

15 months ago

The problem with Apple Arcade is the game design, not the graphics. Their offerings are low-stakes, unambitious in narrative, derivative in design.

Just for the record, here's just a few pixel art games released in 1992. In case you are someone who cares about gaming, you might have head of some of these titles.

- A Link to the Past
- Final Fantasy V
- Bare Knuckle II
- Romancing Saga
- Art of Fighting
- Sonic 2
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Shining Force
- Dragon Quest V
- Mario Land 2
- Dune II
- Kirby's Dream Land
- Mega Man V
- Contra III

I could go on and on. Those were proper games of many different genres, each of them better than anything on Apple Arcade. Graphics are absolutely not the problem with what Apple's offering.

Agree completely. For me, Super Nintendo was the golden age of gaming. I have nothing at all against pixel graphics. I was pointing out the wasted graphics potential of Apple Arcade, but the games fail in many other ways including design. They are all shallow one finger tapping games, put to shame by any good console game of the last 40 years.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Simmias

15 months ago

Apple at the iPhone event: “Our new A19 Pro chip with vapor cooling system delivers sustained performance for demanding AAA games with ray tracing and shading.”

Apple Arcade: “Here’s a new dominoes and Thomas the Tank Engine game with pixel art graphics from 1992.”

Why does Apple continue to push GPU performance when there are zero games on Apple Arcade that even come close to taking advantage of what their current hardware can do? Apple Arcade should be a SHOWCASE for the gaming experiences possible on modern Apple hardware, but instead it’s a mockery of the power inside these devices.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

groove-agent

15 months ago

I hope Apple keeps pushing forward with gaming so I don't have to keep a PC around to play "real" games. They need to have a "gaming-class" GPU that isn't thousands of dollars, or simply create a thunderbolt 5 eGPU using Apple Silicon technology.

The best time for gaming was when we could dual boot Windows and us eGPUs. I wonder if we could see this come around again given the proliferation of ARM based Windows machines? Somehow I think it would be comparing apples to oranges hardware/ chipset wise.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Selena Agna

15 months ago

Apple Arcade: “Here’s a new dominoes and Thomas the Tank Engine game with pixel art graphics from 1992.”

The problem with Apple Arcade is the game design, not the graphics. Their offerings are low-stakes, unambitious in narrative, derivative in design.

Just for the record, here's just a few pixel art games released in 1992. In case you are someone who cares about gaming, you might have head of some of these titles.

- A Link to the Past
- Final Fantasy V
- Bare Knuckle II
- Romancing Saga
- Art of Fighting
- Sonic 2
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Shining Force
- Dragon Quest V
- Mario Land 2
- Dune II
- Kirby's Dream Land
- Mega Man V
- Contra III

I could go on and on. Those were proper games of many different genres, each of them better than anything on Apple Arcade. Graphics are absolutely not the problem with what Apple's offering.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Read All Comments

Apple Arcade Adding Four Games Next Month, Including NBA 2K26

Popular Stories

Apple's App Store Chief Explains Its Push for Premium Games

Apple Arcade Adding These Four Games in December

Apple Arcade Adds Crossy Road Rush and NBA 2K27

Top Rated Comments

Next Article

Videos

Guides

Upcoming

Other Stories