Apple Arcade
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Apple said to be spending more than $500M on Arcade gaming subscription effort
Apple’s new gaming subscription service Apple Arcade may have been a bit of a footnote at its Services event earlier this month compared to the stage time given to more prime time-ready efforts like Apple TV+ and Apple News+, but the company is throwing some major funding behind its effort to get people paying a monthly fee for exclusive titles.
The company has already set aside a budget of more than $500 million for its Arcade service, according to a report in the Financial Times.
The service, arriving in the fall, will let users play exclusive gaming titles across their Apple devices ad-free and offline. The titles will be free of micro-transactions, unlike many of the popular gaming titles on the App Store.
While the company has already reportedly spent more than $1 billion on its TV+ content service, the gaming subscription world marks another uncharted territory for Apple as it will put the tech giant in the position of curating with its cash by directly funding titles for exclusive launches on Apple Arcade. At its event, the company detailed that it will have more than 100 new and exclusive gaming titles launching as part of its service.
The report states that in order to receive funding from Apple, developers will have to eschew releases on the Google Play Store and refrain from taking part in other gaming subscription services. After a “few months” of exclusivity, developers will be able to release their games on non-mobile platforms such as PCs and gaming consoles. The company is focusing its efforts on funding indie titles as opposed to bankrolling AAA studios to create an exclusive epic.
As with Apple TV+, we’re still waiting on exact details regarding price and availability.
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Apple Arcade is Apple’s new cross-platform gaming subscription
Apple wants to tilt the balance from ad-laden freemium gaming titles toward all-access ad-free gaming experiences that can be downloaded across platforms on iOS, macOS and tvOS.
At the company’s services event this morning, they announced Apple Arcade, their new premium subscription service for gaming across their hardware products. “We want to make gaming even better,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said onstage.
The subscription will boast 100+ new and exclusive games while Apple will be adding new content “all the time.” It looks like the company will have a hand in building out the titles by working directly with developer partners to produce titles. Early partners include names like Disney, Konami and Lego.
Another important note: All games will be playable offline. This is a content play rather than a tech product like Google’s recently announced Stadia game-streaming platform. The subscription will provide access to all of the content in the games without ads.
Apple has the benefit of building this directly into the App Store; you’ll be able to access Apple Arcade from a new bottom tab in the App Store app. This may be the company’s best chance at leveraging its strength on iOS to finally build a better home for games on Mac.
The service is coming this fall. Apple oddly didn’t detail pricing, though they did share it would be launching in 150 regions.
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