Apple Arcade is set to launch later this year. It’s time for game app developers to prepare for any possible changes this will bring.
What is Apple Arcade?
This subscription service provides a collection of high-quality, ad-free games to subscribers in exchange for a monthly fee.
The library will include about 100 hand-picked games and will be updated monthly, meaning no game is guaranteed a permanent place in the Apple Arcade.
This service also includes:
- The ability to play games offline;
- A Family Sharing Plan that lets everyone in the subscriber’s home play,
- Access to the library on multiple Apple devices.
How does Apple Arcade affect mobile game developers?
Some developers are concerned about the arcade’s potential impacts on the game apps category and have questions about what the future has in store.
For starters, would users go out of their way to search for new games when they are subscribing to a service that provides the best games available?
We don’t know yet.
The arcade will have its own tab in the App Store, separate from the game app category tab. This means it’s possible for the arcade to be an additional source of revenue, rather than a total game changer.
But we still can’t say whether or not most gamers will prefer the arcade, taking away a large number of users who pay for games found in the app store.
If the latter scenario turns out to be true, then developers will want to be part of the Apple Arcade. This poses a challenge to smaller developers who lack the resources required to build the high-quality games the arcade demands.
The developers who manage to get in will most likely receive a portion of the arcade’s total earnings. The bad news is, few of them will make a satisfactory profit, while most of them won’t make much money at all.
But even the top earners won’t be safe. After all, Apple will be updating the arcade library on a monthly basis. If you don’t keep your game up to snuff, it will get tossed out and replaced by a newer, better game.
Future of Apple games
With its new arcade, it appears that Apple is attempting to do away with in-game ads, a strategy that is currently utilized by many game developers. It involves enticing users with free games and hitting them with ads once they are in.
In contrast, Apple Arcade has promised to provide users with ad-free games. App developers who are aiming to break into the arcade will switch their focus from ads to creating amazing, high-quality games that provide a stellar user experience. Easy, right?
There are some serious gamers who will jump at the chance to access a library of the best games on the Apple market without being bombarded by ads. They won’t mind paying the monthly subscription fee in order to receive those appealing benefits.
But there is a separate group of users who probably won’t think the price of a subscription fee is worth its returns. These users don’t mind ads, and in fact, consider them a normal part of the mobile game experience. All they want is some free amusement to pass the time.
Whether or not Apple could ever convince those casual gamers to subscribe is still uncertain. But for now, it seems that small or new game app developers still have a target market they can reach.
This should reassure anyone who doesn’t currently stand a chance of breaking into the highly exclusive Apple Arcade.
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