Over the years, many App Store commentators have questioned Apple’s commitment to mobile gaming – and for good reason. Despite numerous overhauls to their platform, a greater emphasis on storefront curation and big budget announcements, it’s been down to third-party efforts to ensure that hundreds of iconic games are not simply erased from the annals of the App Store forever. However, the recent announcement of the Apple Arcade suggests that the company has finally seen value in the incubation of quality mobile titles, and a Financial Times article suggests that this is backed by a rather substantial monetary commitment too. According to their sources, Apple is spending ‘several million dollars each’ on most of the 100+ titles that will debut on Apple Arcade, with a total budget potentially being greater than $500 million.
While such ridiculously huge numbers are incredibly hard to comprehend in real-world terms, I can safely say that the budget for most mobile games is significantly less than Apple’s multi-million dollar investment into games for its Arcade. This makes sense, as if you want console-esque experiences on mobile, you really need to have console-esque budgets. The FT article also suggests that any developers who pledge mobile and subscription exclusivity will receive an ‘extra incentive’ (read: more money). While this means that releasing games for sale on the likes of the Nintendo Switch is fine, putting them for download on Xbox Game Pass or the Google Play Store is a no-no.
This subscription exclusivity the most interesting part of these recent rumours, as Apple is firmly backing this monetisation model for premium titles as the future across the whole of the games industry. It may not seem like a particularly big deal now, but with the PS5 and Xbox Two (or whatever its successor may be called) seemingly on the horizon – and with greater emphasis on digital distribution with the likes of the All-Digital Xbox One S – this clause could be yet another industry standard that Apple has pioneered, for better and for worse. Still, with so many awesome titles and developers working with Apple Arcade right now, this financial commitment is only going to be a good thing for us gamers. Imagine what Konami could do with that sort of money on Frogger in Toy Town?! The possibilities are truly endless.
[Source: FT]
The lack of active cooling in Apple devices is a huge no for me. I play on iPhone XS with an MFi controller and it’s a bit frustrating. We could run Doom, Wolfeinstein 2, Dragon Ball fighter Z, Metal Gear Solid 5, Mortal Kombat 11 etc but instead, we get small games targeted at a specific audience...oh and there is no decent NHL game yet...Grid Autosport is 6-7 GB and is one of the larger console type racer that shows what iOS is capable of. All Switch games can run on iPhone 8 and above. They can probably run better but due to lack of active cooling and the market, we don’t see that. It’s a shame to have these powerful devices that can play most ps3/Xbox 360 and some ps4/Xbox one (transistor,Inside etc) games waste their potential. At this point, it’s almost better to run a psp (PPSSPP) emulator to play decent games like TEKKEN, God of war, Metal Gear, Kingdom Heart etc
Ultimately this comes down to Apple making their devices to serve too broad of a purpose or, at the very least, without enough emphasis on that gaming element. Commitments like Apple Arcade and (hopefully!) some bespoke hardware for this gaming push are potentially alleviating this somewhat, however I still hope that the quirky creativity of the App Store remains. Do you really want to be playing Metal Gear Solid on a phone? Apple need to aim bigger, sure - and a lot of these Arcade games seem to indicate this - but it is still a handheld multipurpose device, after all.
Thats why i prefer a smartphone with android to run my emulators, like Drastic (DS), PPSSP e Gba games, because its dont have any IAPs and have full storys
Android has the best emulators in the smartphone game period. There’s even some of the big dogs like PS2, GameCube/Wii, Dreamcast and even 3Ds !!!! I mean that’s the portable emulation dream.ios can run all these emus at full speed but no one wants to port them...
I want to play old games until I do then I realized they suck
Damn...it’s kinda true...
even ps2 games are kinda boring and very grindy
But some aren’t that bad like FF X, Metal gear 3, Shadow of the Colossus and God of war 2
MGS is great, FFX has so many game breaking bosses, i really like X2 tho, GOW graphic is a mess lol