The Financial Times says the company is spending 'several million dollars each' on more than 100 games, putting Apple Arcade's budget in excess of $500 million dollars. At its March event, Apple announced that Arcade would launch in the fall but did not announce pricing.
The report also says that Apple is offering an 'extra incentive' to a developer if their game remains exclusive to Apple Arcade.
Our sources indicate that all Apple Arcade games will not be offered on Google Play Store. The deal is essentially 'mobile exclusive', so developers will be allowed to launch on games consoles like PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch — just no Android. Arcade games will not be sold in the App Store as normal downloads.
The customer pitch for Apple Arcade is an alternative offering to the countless freemium games that dominate the App Store charts. For one monthly fee, users can play any game in the Arcade catalog. An Apple Arcade game will have no additional purchases or upsell, no limited levels, and no ads. Arcade games will also not be able to share any data with publishers unless the customer provides explicit consent.
Also at Engadget.
Previously: Apple News+ and Apple Arcade Announced
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Apple just announced Apple News Plus, a news subscription service for $9.99 a month
Apple announced a new subscription news service, Apple News Plus, on Monday during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. Starting Monday, the company said, Apple News Plus will curate articles from more than 300 news outlets and magazines via the Apple News app for $9.99 a month.
Apple says magazines and articles included with the Apple News Plus subscription will appear in a new tab on the Apple News app in a redesign released later Monday as part of an iOS software update.
Apple News Plus will feature content from several major news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Vox, and the Los Angeles Times as well as the more than 300 magazines that were included with Texture, the digital magazine app Apple purchased last year. Notably absent among national news brands are The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Though Apple's app offers a significant discount for publications like The [Wall Street] Journal, which charges $19.50 a month for an all-access digital subscription, it appears that Apple subscribers will not have full access to all the partners' content. Reports Monday cited an internal memo as saying only some Journal articles, for example, would be offered via Apple News Plus, with The Journal's business reporting remaining exclusive to direct subscribers.
Apple Arcade Announced: New Game Subscription Service Coming To iOS, Mac, Apple TV This Year
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday April 15 2019, @01:16PM (11 children)
I'd understand if they didn't allow the games on PS4, Xbox, PC, etc. But when they only rule out Android that seems, I dunno, abuse of something?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @01:18PM (1 child)
Of course. But still legal because Apple doesn't have market dominance. Like Steam supporting "Steam OS only game" or something. Only difference is Apple is much larger and richer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday April 15 2019, @01:29PM
The relevant example is not Steam, but the recent Epic Games exclusivity agreements that are a big deal right now. Epic is throwing around big bucks to get 1 year long exclusivity agreements (6 months for Borderlands 3 [wccftech.com]).
Legal challenge to this? Unlikely. Although it will be interesting to see whether Apple crushes Spotify et al., or gets slammed for the Apple News thing (don't forget the EU link tax and Google News).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @01:27PM (2 children)
platform exclusives have been a thing since ever and what law exactly are you think they violate?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 15 2019, @02:04PM (1 child)
Legally retarted or not - the question is "how right are these exclusivity deals?" Yes, of course I know that "legal" has little relationship to right, or wrong, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical. It is our duty, though, to make an attempt to get all of those to line up. They really ought to be almost synonymous. The fact that they don't jive with each other, often causes someone to ask, "THIS IS LEGAL?!?!?!"
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday April 15 2019, @02:24PM
Actually, the question was literally "This is legal?" And AC's answer is correct, if rude.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rigrig on Monday April 15 2019, @01:38PM (2 children)
Well, if they hired a bunch of developers into an "Apple games" division and made their own iGames, would not porting them to Android seem abusive?
This looks a lot like simply outsourcing the development of those iGames.
As long as the deal is a per-game choice between "Easy money from Apple" and "Port to Android" it seems fine to me.
Less ok would be "if you release any Android games, the easy money for all your games stops" (or even "release anything on Android and all your games will be yanked from the App Store")
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday April 15 2019, @02:00PM (1 child)
Ummm... smells fishy. More precisely, this:
Pretty much as with Apple music, isn't it? I'm yet to hear a singer getting rich from the royalties paid from music offered exclusively on iTunes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday April 15 2019, @02:45PM
No, but you better believe a lot of publishers have. The financials should be somewhat better for indie game devs since they will not be tied to a equivalent of a record label who has spent its entire existence trying to rip off the artists it promotes. The music industry has it's own special kind of greed.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Monday April 15 2019, @02:47PM
Is it any different from the Microsoft games that only work with DirectX 9. Dungeon Siege for example.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 15 2019, @02:53PM (1 child)
Game platforms are already doing this. There is a major issue going on in the gaming community about the spyware ridden Epic game launcher signing exclusive games for big money.
https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/Epic-games-store-exclusives [gamewatcher.com]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday April 15 2019, @03:46PM
The difference between Epic Games Store and Apple Arcade is that any user of Windows on x64 can install Epic Games Store, even if Steam, GOG, and Microsoft Store are also installed. It's not like Apple or console stores, where users of the majority platform would have to purchase and carry additional hardware to access games exclusive to that store.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 15 2019, @04:24PM (1 child)
The thing with actual arcade games was, the most successful one were not determined by initial sale but by engagement. This is the reason why they were on average of better playability than... Well everything else. At least until neo geo and big sprites put FX before dynamics.
Apple should try to replicate this with some incentives for the most popular games. Else it risks having poor quality. Which is not tragic as the gamers are too ignorant of the golden era of arcades (70s-1985) to tell good from bad.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @10:24PM
As someone who has 'collected' pretty much every rom out there I can get my hands on, dropped thousands of quarters on them, and owner of well over 2k in games. I am going to disagree. Most arcade games are terrible for play-ability. They were not designed that way. They were designed for you to have a very small bit of fun and frustration. Be wickedly hard with enough 'almost got it' for you to drop another 25 cents. That is not playability. That is a skinner box. Most are little more than high score tables for particular feats of timing. It was not until the early 90s that you started seeing arcade games that were interesting to play. Most of the early games it was about hanging with your buds.
I grew up in that era. A *very* small handful of those games are really worth playing. If you were playing them for long periods and having lots of 'fun' the operators would have yanked the machine off the floor and try to sell it off to some other sucker.