A bunch of these are of interest to me: Down in Bermuda, Card of Darkness, Grindstone, Spaceland…and I’ve only looked up a handful of titles so far. Oh, and Cat Quest 2, ofc.
I’ve always enjoyed playing games on iOS. Back when I had Android or Windows phones, I always kept around an iPod Touch since I love the app ecosystem.
So to me, Apple Arcade seems awesome. Not only do I get more indie games coming to the platform in the style I’ve always enjoyed, but inclusion in Arcade guarantees that they won’t have shitty in-app purchases / timers / other awful free-to-play mechanics.
Some of the games will still undoubtedly be bad of course, but at least they’ll be bad because of design, rather than being good games otherwise ruined by bad monetization.
Also - I saw that one of the games included in Arcade is What the Golf? - that was one of my favorite games at PAX last year so I can’t wait to try it out.
Yep, between Mini Motorways, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Overland, and What the Golf (and whatever that Lego game is, maybe?) I’m pretty much sold on Apple Arcade. I hope it’s benefiting the developers a lot, because I would love to think it might be a big part of profitably bringing premium games back to mobile.
I also hope that the high-profile game library means that they won’t be deprecated when iOS 15 comes out. I’m still upset over all my old games that are just…gone.
Apple has a long history of taking your investment and flushing it down the toilet. Having had my 3k+ Macbook turned into a paper weight with software update was enough for me. Buyer beware. How this company stays in business I’ll never know, the contempt and/or disregard they have for their customers is staggering.
That’s a great point, too, Andy. I would think it would have to extend the lifespan of the games in the service at least a bit. Usually they disappear because it’s not worth the effort of updating them, but now Apple might have some incentive to help fund the update. Maybe that’s being naively optimistic.
It’s too late now, but back up to iTunes. I still have all my old apps. Not sure they would still work though. EA removed all the Flight Command games from the store so I am tempted to go find them on my Mac, but I doubt they will work.
What Andy means is that when iOS is updated frequently it breaks older apps and the developers have little financial incentive to make them run again. That can happen on PC as well, but in the case of mobile, it frequently means games stop working after a year or two.
Flight Command was way before the 64 bit switch, it won’t work.
Dang it, didn’t think of the 64 bit thing. Oh well. Thanks.
Yeah, that’s specifically what I was thinking of. I know there’s only so much you can do, and it’s no different than PC games that won’t work with an OS update…but the hard switch to 64-bit was particularly harsh. I’m sure I could maintain a non-upgraded older phone, but that’s a lot of work just to keep those games, especially when the OS keeps trying to auto-update.
Which laptop and which software update, out of curiosity? The toughest transition I had was High Sierra on a 2014 where it wasn’t prudent to do a fresh install, but something about the patch wreaked havoc with Windowserver. I ended up moving to a 2017, then wiping and resetting the 2014, after which it behaved better, but still.
Curious why wasn’t a fresh install prudent? Unless I was looking for a reason to buy a new computer, these things are always salvageable. And Apple almost always will fix it for you, you just might lose everything in the process.
I have a hard time taking angry post like his seriously. Any computer is at risk during OS upgrades. The user has a responsibility to back up their computer if that happens.
I probably should have actually done the fresh install anyway, but at the time, we were quite busy developing web applications where the build was based on a lot of config that was kind of accidental, or at least not well understood. Obviously not a good situation. I couldn’t find a good window of time to sort it out, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to set things up again fast enough again if I did a fresh install. Eventually we got out of that trap, and that’s when I switched to the 2017.
It wasn’t even close to “paperweight” territory, though. That makes little sense to me.
Alright, upgraded to iOS 13 (🤞🏼) and started my Arcade subscription. So far I’ve downloaded Sayonara Wild Hearts, What The Golf, and Mini Motorways.
There’s a lot there, so I’ll be curious what turns out to be worth the time.
Everything I have heard/read so far, there is tons of good stuff there. Have yet to hear a bad word.
Some cool stuff on the way, too, like Cardpocalypse from Gambrinous (guild of Dungeoneering, something, something, never fearing).
This looks great, but personally I’ll wait for a few iOS 13 patches before diving in (early word is that it’s really buggy).
Also, an insider tells me that getting in Apple Arcade is a pretty good deal for the devs, so YAY. It’s going to be like Christmas on my phone for the next few days!
From the trailer, Sayonara Wild Hearts looks like a cool trippy neon aesthetic with a cool soundtrack with all the “gameplay” of an endless runner.
It looked like more style than substance, but then John Siracusa raved about how great it is.
But I’ve played the first few levels and it’s exactly what I thought it was. I’m going back to What The Golf?