As part of a series of announcements, Apple talked about its new gaming service. It’s called Arcade. Exclusives will be released on it, access to which will be open by subscription.
On March 25, the Apple giant staged a large-scale event in Cupertino. A number of new services of the company were presented at it. Among them was the Apple Arcade.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, anticipating its announcement, called iOS the largest gaming platform in the world. According to him, the number of players on iOS has reached 1 billion, and the number of games is 300 thousand.
Also, before the announcement of Arcade, the company announced the reason why it decided to launch it. The fact is that the popularity of the free-play distribution model has made premium games on the platform uncompetitive. And Apple volunteered to solve this problem by offering a service where bright, artistic projects will appear.
The service will have its own section in the App Store. The service’s games will be without advertising and micropayments. All projects will be exclusive to Apple. Access to them will be possible only by subscription.
Any game can be launched from both iOS mobile devices, as well as from Mac and Apple TV set-top box. However, we are not talking about a cloud platform here. Projects will be uploaded to devices to play offline.
Among the projects announced for the site are the continuation of the quest of the early 90s Beyond a Steel Sky from the author of the Broken Sword series Charles Cecil and Fantasian, a new project by Hironobu Sakaguchi, designer and producer of the Final Fantasy series of games. The author of SimCity and The Sims, Will Wright, is also developing a project for Apple, although it is unknown which one.
Annapurna Interactive, Bossa Studios, Cartoon Network, Klei Entertainment, Konami, Sega, Platinum, Disney and many other companies have also been named among the partners of the platform.
At the launch of Apple Arcade, which is scheduled for this fall, the site will have 100 exclusives. After the launch, its library is promised to be updated regularly.
It has not yet been announced how much the subscription will cost.