{"id":91152,"date":"2019-03-26T10:26:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T10:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pockettactics.com\/articles\/apple-arcade-announced\/"},"modified":"2019-03-26T10:26:15","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T10:26:15","slug":"apple-announces-premium-subscription-service-apple-arcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/03\/26\/apple-announces-premium-subscription-service-apple-arcade\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple announces premium subscription service Apple Arcade"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Joe Robinson<\/span> 26 Mar 2019<\/span> <\/p>\n

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Hot on the heels of all the fun-times of GDC<\/a>, Apple seem keen to retake the initiative on mobile gaming, or at least, the conversation around mobile gaming. Last night they made a number of announcements at their \u201cIt\u2019s Show Time\u201d event at the Apple Park campus, the most relevant to us being Apple Arcade.<\/p>\n

Apple Arcade is essentially a subscription service, \u2018Netflix for mobile games\u2019 if you want the catchy elevator pitch, although it\u2019s equally as comparable with initiatives like PlayStation Plus\/Now, or Humble Monthly. This is something that\u2019s been hinted at for a while, and certainly Apple have been making noises about wanting to improve discoverability of games \u2013 even though apparently sites like ours aren\u2019t needed anymore.<\/a><\/p>\n

Essentially Apple Arcade will allow iOS, MacOS and Apple TV users can pay a subscription fee to get access to the entire library of games included in the Arcade, which will be over 100 at launch. We\u2019ll post the full list that we know about below, but it includes games like Overland<\/em> and the newly announced Beyond a Steel Sky<\/em>, the former of which is one of our most anticipated mobile games of the year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=67umVefSXnY?controls=0]<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t great news for Android users, as they\u2019ve already said that any game on Apple Arcade won\u2019t be on any other mobile platforms, and they won\u2019t be any other subscription service. We could probably still see PC\/Console ports (or more likely, PC\/Consoles games ported to iOS via Apple Arcade), but Android users could potentially lose out on a lot of promising premium titles after this program launches.<\/p>\n

This is a strange one for me personally \u2013 as an Android-only mobile user, it sucks that I probably won\u2019t be able to play great games like Overland<\/em> now, unless they come to PC. But Pocket Tactic\u2019s mission is to support premium mobile games, and those that play them, as much as we can\u2026 plus, there\u2019s no ignoring that more of you game on iOS than you do Android.<\/p>\n

While I doubt Apple Arcade will be some kind of messianic \u2018saviour\u2019 for premium games, I think it will offer a more comfortable route to market for many premium developers. There are countless things to worry about on the app store: discoverability, profitability, niche interests\u2026 Apple Arcade is likely to help with many of these, but then there\u2019s plenty of proven cases of premium games doing fine without it so far. If a developer isn\u2019t particularly bothered about making an Android port, I imagine that will help contextualise the benefits of Arcade. There are plenty of PT favourites that still don\u2019t have Android versions, after all.<\/p>\n

There are still several big questions that Apple will need to fill in some blanks for, however, namely:<\/p>\n