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Apple Arcade subscription service announced

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
100+ exclusive games
Cloud saves
Offline play
No microtransactions or ads
Family sharing at no extra cost

Fall 2019

Pricing tbd



 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
So it's basically Microsoft's Game Pass model? Interesting...
 

manfestival

Member
I expected this to be streaming and I am pleasantly surprised by this being different.
Though 100+ exclusive games... HMMM
 

NickFire

Member
Depending on price this could be a hit. For people with children who like mobile games, no extra cost for family sharing would be a nice feature.
 

octiny

Member
Some of the games look pretty awesome. Promising.

Developer list so far:

2illk0o.jpg
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
I am pleasantly surprised. i'll give it a go once it releases.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
Yawn. Looks like garbage. They literally said it's for games that don't sell well or nobody will fund/publish. They just out a spin on it. OK there might be some games that'll be worth playing but most likely the majority will be junk.
 

Hudo

Member
Was it known that Sakaguchi is working on a game called Fantasian? That was news to me, at least.
 

Moses85

Member
As exspected no competitor to the real Gaming devices. I am even more impressed by Google and idgaf about their service.

But the Apple sect will buy without a doubt.
 

Larxia

Member
I'm not into mobiles games at all, and not into Apple products at all either, but at this point I think I'll be kinda happy when any big company announce anything that isn't streaming.
 

Geki-D

Banned
All the games in that video look like phone games. Why should I care about that? Will it actually have any of the year's decent triple A games on it? Any AAA new IPs? Or is this the indie service?
 
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shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
Not so interested for myself but this could be a great option for families with kids. One flat fee per month with no microtransactions or ads.
 

Domisto

Member
It says it's also for desktop but how many games will be desktop first? I'm betting not many, which would be a shame.
 

Fbh

Member
Said it in the other thread, but showing a bunch of indie tier looking games of which there's tons on both consoles and PC but acting as if it's this new concept that goes against the "mainstream" and that can only exist thanks to Apple is probably the most Apple way of introducing something

Worst one is the dude that's basically "There's no guns or killing in our game, we are so different that this can only exist thanks to Apple Arcade".
I guess I missed the part where Apple was responsible for Gone Home, Stardew Valley, The Witness, Broken Age, Oxenfree, Animal Crossing, Journey, etc



With that said. That Sakaguchi game looks neat. Hopefully it's a timed exclusive
 

theHFIC

Member
Hopefully this will move the desktop Mac from a platform known for getting way late ports of big games to Day 1 releases of cell phone games.
 

wipeout364

Member
Hopefully this will move the desktop Mac from a platform known for getting way late ports of big games to Day 1 releases of cell phone games.
It truly is sad that this is viewed as an improvement, but as a half time Mac user, sadly it is.
 

Chittagong

Member
Money hatting 100+ games for a platform with limited commercial upside to the developer suggests that a negative selection will happen.

Developers desperate for cash flow but unsure of their commerical prospects will be tempted to sell, which might not lead to the most compelling roster.
 

iconmaster

Banned
it can be played on MacBooks, iPads, iPhones, AppleTV etc

This is interesting to me. You can't, currently, run iOS games on the Mac. Now, many iOS games are built in Unity and there's no reason those couldn't also be compiled for Mac. I might have assumed Arcade just covers all platforms but the games differ by platform, but Apple is specifically advertising "Jump from iPhone to iPad, Mac, and Apple TV." So, that's interesting.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
This is interesting to me. You can't, currently, run iOS games on the Mac. Now, many iOS games are built in Unity and there's no reason those couldn't also be compiled for Mac. I might have assumed Arcade just covers all platforms but the games differ by platform, but Apple is specifically advertising "Jump from iPhone to iPad,Mac, and Apple TV." So, that's interesting.

Yeah, that could open up some new experiences. With Apple News+ they have 300+ magazines on board and newly adapted to phone and tablets with Apple's own formatting conventions as part of the deal. It does look like they're pushing cross-platform play in the marketing here, so they'll likely require Arcade devs to design multiple control schemes.
 

theHFIC

Member
This is interesting to me. You can't, currently, run iOS games on the Mac. Now, many iOS games are built in Unity and there's no reason those couldn't also be compiled for Mac. I might have assumed Arcade just covers all platforms but the games differ by platform, but Apple is specifically advertising "Jump from iPhone to iPad, Mac, and Apple TV." So, that's interesting.

Apple has started unifying iOS and macOS executables with Mojave 10.14. It includes a number of libraries that were originally under the code name Marzipan to facilitate a write once, run anywhere executable based on Swift and Apple libraries (like Metal for graphics). This is part of the reason why Apple is killing off OpenGL on Mac. If every app uses Metal and coded in Swift from here on out it should in theory need to only be written once and run on both iOS and macOS. If you run 10.14 on a Mac now, the Stocks App, Home App, News App, and Voice Recorder are current demos of the technology.

This summer at the Worldwide Developer Conference they are rumored to open the floodgates to allow all developers to have access to these libraries.

The big question is the rumor of Apple switching its entire lineup of computers from Intel to their in house ARM chips. Having everything on unified libraries like they are now is a big hint that this is the direction they are going. It would be great for their "vision" of iOS games on Mac, but not so great for PC games on Mac unless they are willing to retool them to be metal friendly.
 

DESTROYA

Member
+1 for running locally
But they need to make an universal gamepad
They do advertise some games will have gamepad support but I agree this paid service if it’s going to differentiate itself from pure mobile gaming should have gamepad some sort of for all titles.
I mean how are you going to use it on a AppleTV? I’m hoping they release some type of gamepad, make it the type that can clip to your iPhone and use as a regular controller and if the games are decent enough Apple might have something.
 

Durask

Member
I hope they have some kind of controller planned since I do not see anyone playing games with the Apple TV remote.
 

TeamGhobad

Banned
so will xbox ps nintendo accept them on their platform? i think not.

edit: looks like its a bunch of glorified mobile games.

edit2: seems like a lot of indie games that went MIA have now popped up and are ARCADE exclusive. this explains their disappearing.

edit3: This whole these games couldn't not have been done by the mainstream, this game doesn't have any killing in it BS is starting to piss me off.
 
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ghairat

Member
Well, Apple did say that the newest Ipad is as strong as Xbone. They just have to make the new iphone stronger
 
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