Apple Arcade:
When Apple Inc. boss Tim Cook takes the stage at the Steve Jobs Theater in Silicon Valley on Monday, he will usher in a new era for the world’s largest technology company.
The chief executive officer is expected to unveil streaming video and news subscriptions, key parts of Apple’s push to transform itself into a leading digital services provider. The company may even discuss a monthly video games subscription.
Apple is also working on a premium games subscription for its App Store and discussing it with potential partners, according to people with knowledge of the plans. This service won’t take on new cloud-based streaming offerings like Google Stadia. Instead, it will focus on iPhones and iPads and bundle together paid games from different developers that consumers can access for a monthly fee. Cheddar previously reported that Apple was working on a gaming-related subscription service.
The company would collect these monthly fees, then divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games, one of the people said. Apple is likely considering popular paid titles on the App Store and would exclude titles that are free to download but generate revenue via in-app purchases.
Apple could discuss the service as soon as Monday, or it may choose to detail the offering at its conference for developers later this year. Some of the most popular paid games on the App Store include Microsoft-owned Minecraft and franchises like NBA 2K and Grand Theft Auto.
Well, I don’t think we’ve ever had a revenue model quite like that in video games, where it’s tied directly to playtime alone (not playtime for the sake of ads, for example). Wonder how it will play out…
Dictionaries will adjust the spelling of grind to griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnd.
That’s similar to how YouTube pays out. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, technically, but remember Amazon used to give away Android games completely free and also pay for all the in-app purchases… and nobody cared.
I don’t trust Apple to forget about it after several months and just keep it around with a few publishers participating while everyone else has moved on.
That said, their news service is supposedly going to use the pay system and everyone who doesn’t have a successful subscription service (so everyone but NYT, WSJ, etc) are going to give it a try figuring it’s worth the risk.
The WSJ actually did sign up. NYT and the Post declined.
I might be the only person who cared, but I miss Amazon Underground. That and a new free app they gave out every day for a couple years were pretty cool. It got me buying quite a few kindle books.
I haven’t had any apple products in >5 years, but I might pick one up if their subscription has enough stuff that interests me.
I think you were the one guy that cared, yeah. I mean it was an amazing service, completely free games with IAPs paid for, and nobody seemed excited about it.
Does anyone know how GameTap compensated developers? Also would game pass and playstation now not have similar style of revenue models (I don’t see how they can’t without playtime per game being a consideration).
It just became that much less attractive to develop an actual decent mobile game that isn’t a grindy shitfest. Now it’ll be a race to the bottom to find the most effective methods of enticing gamers to keep the app on screen. Our calculations have shown that if we increase loading screen times by just 8 seconds we can generate an additional $743,000 in quarterly revenue!
Did they? Interesting, thanks. I have wanted a WSJ subscription, but balked at the pricing. That makes me more likely to sign up, but I am curious how much of each source will be available.
I would be very surprised if it wasn’t everything. Just a different way to subscribe to that same content, paying more for an all-you-can-eat pass to a bunch of different publications.
There would be at least two of us, then. All the games I have on my kindle are because Amazon just gave them away. Heck, I even grabbed games that my kindle couldn’t play because I figured someday I might upgrade. Why not, free stuff!
Any idea how Origin works for non-EA titles?
One of the problems was all those F2P games become literally nothing when you make the IAPs all free.
I hope you’re right. If the rumored $10 a month price is true, that will be a steal. I would sign up without hesitation. But if it is everything, no one would subscribe to WSJ, etc, at the regular price. It would make their regular subscription service pointless. For that reason I think it will be a best of service. It would kill their subscription base otherwise.
The gaming service though, I am very meh on. I just don’t game much on iOS anymore. Too much garbage and I never trust games to be updated.
I don’t see that as a problem! It exposes the ‘game’ and saves you time and money.
True, but you can skip the intermediate steps then and simply not get/play the game at all!