Apple Arcade

Apples' take on subscription service, primarily aimed at phone users.

 

Family access too.
There is an audience for this.
The stuff my daughters download are almost all based on the business plan of digging through all your personal information and selling it. You have to be real careful not to give access down to your underwear, and the games continually tries to trick the girls to click the wrong button.
I hate it.
Getting away from this, in app purchases and so on would be such a relief.

 

It's out, is continually added to, and works as advertised.
The games are severely lacking in bald marines and gore, so if that is ones preferred entertainment, it's useless.
In general, production budgets are modest, and the scope of the games reflect that.

If you have a more general interest in gaming however, it is a window into an alternative take on games - the absence of design around monetisation schemes, the not-produced-according-to-megacorp-focus groups feel of the products. It's like some kind of indie playground, where not so mainstream ideas get equal space. I like it, while at the same time not really being interested enough to make it a worthwhile subscription for me.

If you recognise yourself in my frustration about mobile games as a parent however, you will see a major appeal in trying to steer your kids away from spyware and games that revolve around creating gambling addictions.

 

Apple Arcade has 150 titles. Oceanhorn 2 uses Unreal Engine, and I think there are a few other examples but I actually couldn't find any. Realistically, studios will gravitate away from using Unreal Engine if they target iOS, regardless of whether Apple is forced to allow them to operate there or not this time around. There is no guarantee Epic won't pull something again, and they demonstrably don't care about pushing their licensees into the line of fire. It would be foolish not to weigh that into the decision of what tools to use when you have the responsibility for a project and employees with families. It may matter more for ports of large Playstation/Xbox/PC games built on UE to iOS/MacOS, though there are ways to for instance translate from Unreal to Unity minimizing the necessary work.

I doubt it affects Apple Arcade specifically a lot either way.

 

Well, this thread is about Apple Arcade specifically, and it's lack of traffic is both a testament to its success and to the inclinations of these forums.
There is a specific Epic-Apple thread.
That said...

Well, I think it is pretty unarguable that Epic did the alienating here.
And of course that isn't good for anyone really, neither Epic, Apple, dependent developers or users.
I'm simply saying that given the nature of the games on Apple Arcade, the impact to the service will be modest either way. When it comes to Apples backwards compatibility, they are quite upfront with guidelines to help future compatibility, and generally keep backwards compatibility for several years after a transition. Games are rather transient in terms of sales, and typically use, so unless you ignore their guidelines your product should be good for a decade or so with minor or no touching up. YMMV.

The games market on MacOS is set to grow, both because the new machines are attractive, but also because Mac users can't run games under Windows on their machines anymore. Economy abhors a vacuum. Someone will pick up the money on the table, and while the ruckus with Epic is unfortunate, it's not as if Mac users won't be able to while away their lifetime times ten playing games on their Macs regardless, should they so desire.