Ever since Apple launched their gaming subscription service Apple Arcade in September of last year, I’ve often wondered how the service is actually performing. There was tremendous buzz on launch from both critics and users alike, which is something I wasn’t quite expecting given the typically negative reaction towards the idea of subscription gaming from the traditional gamer audience. However, given that the App Store is overrun with free to play games that are often exploitative or lacking in any real substance, paying five bucks a month to have access to dozens of games that you know won’t feature a single advertisement or in-app purchase actually looked to be a pretty darn good deal to many people.
With how big of a bang Apple Arcade launched with though, it certainly feels like it’s been whimpering along ever since. We’ve often talked on our podcast about how Apple’s approach to launching Apple Arcade didn’t make much sense. They heavily front-loaded the launch lineup with 50+ of the highest profile games, and although they’ve been trickling out new titles on a near-weekly basis since then and boast more than 120 titles total in the service thus far, there’s been very few head-turners and there definitely hasn’t been any killer, “system seller" type tiles yet. Coupled with the free one month trial period and I feel like most people who were excited about Apple Arcade in the beginning were able to binge on what they wanted to in that first month and haven’t felt the need to keep subscribing to the service afterwards.
It looks like that’s largely been the case too, based on a new report from Bloomberg that states that Apple has cancelled the contracts of some of its in-development Apple Arcade titles in an effort to shift direction towards games with a higher level of “engagement." Apple points to the excellent Grindstone from Capybara Games as the type of title they’re looking to feature more of in Apple Arcade.
The irony here is that free to play games by nature are built to be ongoing services and are designed to keep players engaged for months or even years into the future, and it works because developers earn a continuous stream of money that can then be invested back into the game in the form of frequent new content updates and special events. Those updates and events keep the players further engaged and the cycle continues on and on and on. I’d be willing to bet money that Grindstone, along with quite a few other Apple Arcade games I’ve come across, were originally designed to be free to play games but were switched later in development when they signed on to be part of Apple Arcade in order to fit the premium mold the service was going for.
Most Apple Arcade titles are designed in a more traditional way though, and feature a beginning and end and don’t offer a whole lot of incentive to continue playing once you’ve beaten them. Many of these games also clock in on the shorter side of things in terms of total playtime, often clocking in at just a few hours or less. Which is totally FINE, and in fact I love me a shorter game that I can actually finish, but it doesn’t bode well for a service that Apple wants you to continue to pay for month after month well into the future.
Apple seems to want the long-term engagement and spending of the free to play world but by using a catalog of premium games that are devoid of all the types of things that actually drive that free to play engagement, and I just don’t know if it’s possible or not. I think a much better strategy would have been to launch with a smaller initial lineup, and to have really strung out the releases of their very best stuff over a longer period of time, filling in the gaps between the bigger games with some of the shorter and more artsy experiences. This would have provided players with a reason to continue subscribing just to see what is coming next rather than fill up on everything they wanted right out of the gate.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still some high profile games waiting in the wings for Apple Arcade, but as I said before there’s nothing that’s really a system seller on the service, and given how easy it is to drop in and out of Apple’s subscriptions there’s nothing stopping people from just cancelling Apple Arcade and waiting for the games that really grab their attention to arrive and just subscribing again.
I really like Apple Arcade and I really want to see it succeed. I think it’s filled with a lot of wonderful experiences and is a great value for the money. And things like Xbox Game Pass have shown that subscription gaming can be a huge success. But I think it’s not necessarily the types of games in Apple Arcade that are a problem, but rather Apple’s handling of the service in general that has caused it to languish. Apple tells Bloomberg that it has “always planned to make changes to its Arcade games lineup based on subscriber feedback." But I just don’t see how you can blame the games themselves when you had all the launch buzz you could ask for in the beginning but just didn’t keep your foot on the gas in the 8 or so months since then. At the very least it’ll be interesting to see if this new direction makes a difference to Apple Arcade going forward.
[Via Bloomberg]
HA! I knew the Apple Arcade wasn’t gonna succeed! I’m not a fan of the subscription model at all anyway! Bye! Won’t miss you!
Premium priced games are best. I hate seeing numbers touted out by services like this. Who cares about 100+ games if they are just the same type of freemium title?
Where are the games like Galaxy on Fire 2? Infinity Blade? Implosion?
The best titles we’ve gotten lately are remaster of titles from traditional consoles. The likes of Final Fantasy and such.
After my free trial, which I barely used to play that Zelda clone, I had promptly cancelled.
While I agree with you, the premium price for games on iOS platforms hasn't made money developers hoped for. I think Apple should relook the premium price model once again, especially with new Macs being able to run iOS apps next year.
This. Apple giving developers freedom to change pricing as often as they want, coupled with the awful top charts in the App Store which were basically a golden ticket to being able to make a living selling your game for 99¢, created the race to the bottom mentality and ultimately led to the rise of free to play.
Apple LONG ago should have stepped in and said "Hey, here's the premium tiers of pricing. $1-5, $5-10, $10-20+. Pick one and stick to it, and you can only put your game on sale twice a year." Or something along those lines.
Then maybe customers wouldn't have been trained to just wait out every game dropping to 99¢ because, ultimately, everyone has gotten burned at some point paying full price for a game only to have it go on sale usually within DAYS of it launching, so why not simply wait and see?
Sadly that created a vicious cycle where a dev would see their game not selling well in the first few days and would hit the panic button and drop it to 99¢, thus creating even MORE people who would learn to just wait for a sale. It made the App Store this totally unhealthy ecosystem and Apple stood by and just watched while raking in 30%.
You would think Apple would WANT developers to charge more for their apps, so Apple takes a bigger chunk from that 30% fee.
I did the one free month and that was it. I was hoping for some good titles that would make a subscription service worth it, but that never happened. There’s one or two game I would have bought if they were made available, but nothing that justifies an ongoing fee.
The author said it right. We want something substantial, something that turns heads like Oceanhorn 2 and Beyond a Steel Sky. We don't want games like Grindstone.
I agree that the real big titles, which make you want to subscribe to the service are few in number, but I also see that Apple Arcade works poorly in its dissemination, mainly of the new titles that entered the catalog. I find the showcase of the games very confusing and gives little emphasis to the news. Excellent view of the author. Greetings from Brazil.
I am happy to pay for premium apps to better support a developer even if I don’t have time to play the games themselves. However, if I don’t have time to play them, AND I’d have to keep paying for the option to play them, it’s not worth it. Let me buy Oceanhorn 2, Cat Quest 2, and a few others, and then Apple can at least have their cut. This way, I’m saving so much money by not giving Apple much at all.
Great writing and thoughts on this. I love Apple Arcade too, and I stayed subscribed while I played all the games that interested me. It was awesome. Things like Bleak Sword, Shinsekai, Sneaky Sasquatch and Skate City are so much fun. And that's just to name a few. Of late the releases haven't been as interesting to me personally though. Or rather not interesting enough to subscribe for months at a time. I'll subscribe again when a few more games I'll like are available and then I'll play them until they're done, explore some whatever looks interesting, and unsubscribe again. But I realise this is also because only I play in my home. My friend has a family and they all jam different things so continued subscription makes more sense for them because they all play different things constantly. I hope it succeeds though. It's great.
Apple sent me a second month free last week. I had the Arcade for a couple months when it came out. I've played some of the newer games the last few days and it still doesn't really excite me all that much.
The problem with freemium titles is that they tend to demand a huge amount of time from the players daily. Usually people cannot keep up with playing more than two or three of them at once to justify spending in these games.
I've got two younger kids, so we've been getting our moneys worth since it works with family sharing. That said, when they eventually think the games are "lame" and they want to pick up a console, I can't imagine I'll be keeping the subscription..
Wow I didnt see that coming. Well yes, because I already knew the news from somewhere.
But I thought all was excellent with Apple Arcade.
They dont want to be...what they need to be!
Ongoing services and full engagement please bro!..im having full engagement and lot of hours of content with Scarlet Grace! You need something like that then in your store. But not freemiums or f2ps! Wtf apple!
Apple is going to need to make adjustments to Apple Arcade just like any other part of their business. It's what you would expect them to do if they had long range plans. Personally, I view Apple Arcade as being similar to Apple Music, i.e., you look at the cost per year vs. the total hours of enjoyment you're going to get vs. the other pricing models for the same content. Per Arcade, I've been able to get 70+ hours of fun from a small group of titles. That alone is quite competitive with what I would expect from a single $60 console game at retail, so I view it as being well worth it. Plus, the ability to play the games across Apple's entire range of hardware is a criminally underrated aspect of the service. It's a perk that's entirely unique to Apple Arcade.