Gadgetory

- Seems like everyone's got a major announcement for their version of the future of gaming, and this morning was Apple's turn with Apple Arcade. Now Apple Arcade is not quite the lofty, insane idea that Google has with Stadia. It's something a little more straightforward and plays to the strengths of mobile gaming. The idea is simple, and is basically their version of Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass where you pay a monthly fee and you get access to a number of games that are exclusives to iOS, as far as mobile platform goes, there's a few different games they showed off very quickly and a couple of them we have seen announced for console, but when it comes to mobile phones, these games are gonna be iOS exclusives that you get to play. So the idea here is that instead of having to buy these guys individually and potentially never give some of them a shot, now you just pay this monthly fee and you've access to over 100 different games that you can now access for free, and be able to try them out. Now there's a couple really cool ways about how they're choosing to approach this as well, for instance, it's advertised that none of these games are gonna have any ads, nor are they gonna have any in-app purchases, there will be no content that is behind any kind of a paywall, if you're a part of the membership you get to play the full game. And to top all that off, games will be accessible both offline and online. So if you downloaded a game on your phone or your MacBook, and you're somewhere where there's no reception, or no WiFi you like to use, you can still play the games no worries. One thing that's kind of an interesting distinction too about this services, is that it's not just curating a bunch of stuff that already exists and is bringing stuff to people, Apple's actually talking about how they're working directly with developers, and helping fund and support the projects they're making for this program specifically. So it's not just, hey this stuff's already successful on the App Store, let's go ahead and add it to this subscription service, they're actually making original games specifically for it, which is really neat. The only thing about it that we don't know, and is kind of a big deal, is how much it's gonna cost. And there's a lot of theories you can have about this, what's affordable, what's not, and it's a weird thing to compare to other services because mobile games are priced so much cheaper than they are on a lot of other platforms. Whereas, something like Xbox Game Pass is giving you access to games that cost as low as 15 and 20 bucks, as high as 60, most app games are really three, four, five dollars, maybe ten tops, it's very rarely something above that, unless it's some kind of very special port of a classic game. So with all that in mind, how much are they gonna really charge for this thing? Because, in my mind, a fair amount could be as high as $15. That's basically three games a month. But that's not exactly a competitive price point, especially when you consider how cheap other streaming services for other things like movies and stuff go for. So, really I think they need to be aiming for at most $10, maybe even trying to get a little below the double digits with something like $8 a month. There's been this long debate about whether or not mobile games really count as true video games, which is kind of a silly argument to me. I mean, there was maybe a tiny bit more validity to it years ago when a lot of mobile games were either free-to-play ones that just had tons of in-app purchases, and required you to just buy things left and right, or they were trying to take console experiences and put them on a phone with touch controls and it just didn't really translate well, but over the years there's really been this movement of lots more games developing for the mobile platform in mind that make truly memorable experiences. Whether it's games that are very bite-sized and aesthetic focused like Monument Valley, or other games that learn to take touch controls and really embrace them to do something interesting or different like Dandara, or Severed, or still one of my favorites games to play is the Reign series, which is basically Tinder where you're swiping left and right but it's all fantasy kingdom management and works really well. So on paper this sounds pretty good so far, but I have to wonder is Apple Arcade actually a good idea? Don't get me wrong, I think the initial launch of this program is gonna be something really cool. I think they've been putting a lot of money behind some big name creators to bring some great content, they did a little hype reel of some of the games coming to it, lot of big names including even Sakaguchi, the guy that started Final Fantasy, I think that's awesome. And these look to be really full, big experiences, maybe even a little more beyond what app games currently really show on mobile. It's also cool that they're really heavily pushing the idea of a continued experience across multiple devices, this is similar to something that Google talked a little bit with Stadia, where you can go from one thing to the other, with Apple you're still downloading the games but you can still bring save files across things. So you can play on your phone, but then move on to playing on your TV, or your MacBook, or a tablet, whatever, you have the option to switch between. Where I'm getting a little worried though is the long-term development of these games that are coming to Apple Arcade. This isn't something that they talked about during the press even this morning, but it was reported earlier by people that were talking about what Apple might be talking about, and one of the concepts is that for all these games that are being put on Apple Arcade, the way the developers are getting paid is based on how people play their individual titles on Arcade. That's how they decide how to split up all the income. Where this can get a little worrisome is that, sure, it's great these games don't have in-app purchases, it's great they're not gonna have ads, but there's other aspects of free-to-play games that might start to worm their way in because it's beneficial for these games. The biggest thing is time-suckers, one of the things that I really appreciate a lot about the better mobile games that you pay for, is that they're very isolated quick experiences. It's something where you can pick the game up, and it might only be an hour and a half, two hours, maybe even as long as a five hour investment, but they're little digestible games that can be really good experiences. On the other hand though, if developers are getting paid based on how much people play your game, well now they need to start investing in ways to make the game last longer, make it take longer, make people play more often, maybe give you a reason to login every single day with some kind of incentive, add more content that isn't necessarily actually adding anything of substance to the game but still encourages people enough to keep playing more, and more, and more. Is this something that for sure's gonna happen? No, of course not. This is just conjecture based on how things are supposedly working right now. I just bring it up because I think there is a certain merit to the way that the really good mobile games are currently designed and I don't want that to go away 'cause a subscription service seemed like a better way to advertise them. What I'm trying to say here is that mobile games have been coming a long way and are only getting better, and I'm really hopeful that Apple Arcade is something that embraces and brings them to the forefront and doesn't stop all of that momentum and turn them into something else.