Behind the Scenes of Apple Arcade: Developer Fears and the Future of Gaming

Where are we in the series of show notes

Oh, right. Should we talk about Apple arcade? Griffin, there's a story that came out this week where developers are fearful that Apple's going to cancel the whole thing entirely

And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they did that

What do you think? I don't know if they're on route to being canceled, but this is certainly another, yet another

This is like the cult has negative episode. Dude, we're not trying to keep it negative, but these are the stories that were out this week

Okay, so here's the title. Apple Arcades' Future, Kids win, but Dev's fear smell of death

Apple Arcade now focuses so heavily on family-friendly titles from well-known franchises

that some indie game developers feel abandoned, according to a new report

Some even predict Doom, or at least creative stagnation, lies in Apple Arcade's future if things don't change

Quote, very few original games are being greenlit, unless they are attached to big family-friendly IP reports

the elusive mobile gamer.biz. I love a good dot biz. That's how you know that they're credible

They should start a dot biz. A glance at the top 20 most popular games

on Apple Arcade might explain why. Titles like Hello Kitty Island Adventure

Disney Dreamlight Valley, and Sonic Dream Team dominate the list. Apple seems focused on making the games

that its subscribers play the most. I mean, that seems reasonable. Much of the rest of the list consists of what Apple calls

App Store Greats. These are popular games released years ago in the App Store

then added to the subscription service with in-app purchases stripped out. Developers of completely original games don't sound happy with the direction Apple Arcade is going

Quote, one studio boss told us that after months of glowing feedback on one particular game

the arcade team suddenly withdrew its interest in the title citing a change in strategy When the developer asked for feedback and offered to reduce the budget and retool the game to better fit Apple needs the arcade team simply stopped responding to their emails That just rude

One developer even said that Apple Arcade had the, quote, smell of death, end quote, around it, and claimed the Apple employees didn't seem certain the service had a future

So on one hand, it is very sad because as an indie game enthusiast, you know, I would really like the, you know, I really bought into the original concept of Apple Arcade

where it's like these are the games that we that apple wants to exist on the iPhone and the

platform that you know wouldn't get traditional funding otherwise and by paying into

apple arcade the service you know you can help fund these games you know because they don't

fit into the traditional in-app purchase model on the app store and it seems like now they're

like almost suffering from the success of the the big name IP titles and that can that can make them

that can make the executives leading the ship at Apple to think that that's the only thing worth

doing. But it sounds to me like it's not really, you know, on the brink of disaster

It just sounds like it's evolving based on what people want to play

Yeah. I actually think this makes a lot of sense. Like to have a kid-friendly or family-friendly game subscription that you can plop your kids

down in front of and not have to worry about there being like really terrible blood and

gore and all that kind of stuff. And on platforms that kids typically play on

like iPad and iPhone and stuff, I actually think that makes a ton of sense. And there's nothing really that's like it

I mean, PlayStation's not like that. Game Pass is not like that, obviously

So it is kind of a niche that I think is perfect for Apple

And, you know, Apple Arcade is so cheap. I don't think that they're going to be spending money

to develop AAA titles on Apple Arcade I mean first of all how many people game on Mac so it probably not worth it for them to do that But these kind of well besides Griffin and if you listen to our last off episode you know how surprised that was

and also not surprised to hear that. That is Griffin's primary gaming platform

He's like, I game on the Mac. And I was like, of course, of course you do. He also games on that next computer behind him

You know, he plays like Oregon Trail and stuff. I wish I had a next computer. Go to cult of 9 to5 Mac Rumors.com

and enough people give me money. I'll buy a next computer. Yeah, or you could donate your next computer

That's something that we would take, definitely, some of your five bucks. But, yeah, so I game primarily on PC and also on Xbox Series X, and they're more adult-focused games

So I think the $5 for Apple Arcade, if they're simple, easy to hop in, easy to hop out of experiences that are also suitable for kids, I think that's kind of all Apple Arcade needs to be

I don't know what their vision was for Apple Arcade. Like, I don't know if they had some grand vision of what was going to be happening here or if this was a, you know

you know, T.C. throwing his wheat-free pasta at the wall and seeing what stuck

But I don't think it needs to be anything more than it already is. Like, it's a place for simple games that they throw in with your Apple one subscription

because they want to charge you more money and it's like, oh, we'll toss this in here

and see if it makes a difference, you know? I think that's actually kind of something that the marketplace needs, especially for, you know

kids gaming on the iPad and stuff. Anything else on this story, Griffin? Uh, no, it's pretty much

It's nice that it's turning into something different, even though it's not really what, uh

Apple originally pitched it before. And it sounds like they need to, you know, maybe relay that down to their developers before they dump like hundreds of hours

developing games that are going to get suddenly, uh, redlet, but, but

I thought they were going to be doing more, I thought they going to be funding more indie games and big titles and stuff And I kind of surprised to see that that is something that developers are complaining about and that that seems to not be happening

But it does indicate that maybe they are rethinking what Apple Arcade needs to be

And since it's not been like a huge hit for them, which I doubt it has been, that they're like scaling it back

They're going to keep it around and keep putting games on the platform, but they're not going to be spending a ton of money pushing for games that aren't going to hit huge audiences

I mean, GamePass was one of the original, if not the original game subscription service

And I think it's been hard for Microsoft to even figure that out. Like, that was just such a new and novel thing

And people were so used to buying their games and owning them that it was a hard proposition to convince people to pay

I don't even know how much GamePass was at the time, $10, $15 a month to, like, have a subscription to games

Now it's great because they have so many games on there. And especially now that Apple or that Microsoft is folding Activision Blizzard

into the stable of studios, it's like, man, there's going to be like Call of Duty

Diablo, there's going to be, well, there's already the Bethesda games. I mean, like

all these AAA titles are all included in GamePass now, which I think makes it way more worth it

And Apple doesn't really have any big, cool titles like that. Love Remix is saying Apple console in the future

you already have a console. It's called an Apple TV. You know? I mean, that is a console

I mean, if it has the, same hardware as an iPad. I think that's kind of all you need to play games on your Apple TV

And they have compatibility with Xbox controllers, PlayStation controllers. I just don't think

Apple takes or people don't take Apple seriously as a gaming platform. I think that's their biggest

that's their biggest hurdle, except for iPhone and iPad, but mobile games are not real games

So I'm sorry to tell you that, but I mean, from a real, like, gamer perspective, it's like, those aren't

real games