Fresh on the heels of Google announcing their video game streaming service, Stadia, Apple introduces the Apple Arcade, a subscription service for mobile, desktop, and the living room. This new service will feature over 100 new and exclusive games, including original releases specifically for the platform. These games will have no playtime limit, no ads, no additional purchases, and respect user privacy.
Apple’s App Store has been a widely successful platform for video games, helping bring mobile gaming to where it is today. In the App Store, there are free games, supported by ads or microtransactions, and there are paid games. While paid games can be of a very high-quality, it’s hard to compete with well-made free games, some even developed by AAA development studios such as Blizzard with Hearthstone or Nintendo with Super Mario Run. Apple plans to use the Apple Arcade to bring more content to its App Store patrons through the subscription service.
Apple is betting big on the service, contributing to the development cost on some of the games that will come on its service. The service is already set to feature games from Cartoon Network, Konami, LEGO, SEGA, and plenty more developers that have a history of releasing good games in the App Store and on traditional consoles and arcades. New games will be regularly added to the service.
Members of the service will have access to every game in Apple Arcade for no additional cost. They can download these games to play offline. If they are using an internet connection, members will be able to play on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, picking up right where they left off.
The Apple Arcade will arrive in fall 2019. To see everything Apple has to say as well as the rest of the images they have available, you can read the full press release here.