Everyone has been going gaga over Apple Arcade for the past week, and with good reason. The service so far is outstanding in terms of breadth of quality mobile games to play, and even though everyone who is trying it out is still within the free one month trial period, even when we do start getting charged $4.99 a month it’ll still feel like we’re stealing. But Apple did something a bit odd this time around when they staggered the release of the software updates that enable Apple Arcade on their devices. Back at WWDC in June, Apple officially forked the iPad’s operating system into its own thing called iPadOS. This is derived from the iPhone’s iOS software but features a ton of features that are exclusive to the iPad, mostly to do with multitasking and utilizing the much larger screen space. It makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately it did mean that iOS 13 launched ahead of iPadOS 13, leaving iPad users on the sidelines as iPhone users went to town playing Apple Arcade games. Well, no more! Originally supposed to launch on the 30th, iPadOS 13 has now officially gone live just about 5 days after iOS 13 went live. Now iPad users can finally get down with some Apple Arcade action.
It’s not JUST iPad users though, as the update for tvOS, Apple’s name for the software on their Apple TV devices, has also gone live today. You may recall that one of the features of Apple Arcade is that subscribers will have access to all the games on the service across their iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV devices with just one subscription. And that one subscription can be shared with up to five other people via Family Sharing. It really is a pretty incredible deal. Anyway, if you’re an owner of a 4th generation Apple TV or later, you can now get down with some Apple Arcade games on the big screen of your TV too. The only tricky thing about this is that some of the Apple Arcade games require a controller when played on Apple TV, so if you don’t have an MFi controller or an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 controller around, you might need to pick one up to play a lot of these games on Apple TV. We’ve put together a guide to help you figure out which type of controller would be best for you.
Also, don’t forget that we’ve opened up a brand new forum that’s dedicated entirely to Apple Arcade, so be sure to stop by there for discussion threads on each and every game that’s available for the service as well as games that are coming to the service in the future. So go forth iPad and Apple TV gamers, and update your operating system to version 13 and check out the Apple Arcade service. And Mac users you’ll likely be able to get in on the fun when MacOS Catalina launches next month.
