Apple wants to tilt the balance from ad-laden freemium gaming titles toward all-access ad-free gaming experiences that can be downloaded across platforms on iOS, macOS and tvOS.
At the company’s services event this morning, they announced Apple Arcade, their new premium subscription service for gaming across their hardware products. “We want to make gaming even better,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said onstage.
The subscription will boast 100+ new and exclusive games while Apple will be adding new content “all the time.” It looks like the company will have a hand in building out the titles by working directly with developer partners to produce titles. Early partners include names like Disney, Konami and Lego.
Another important note: All games will be playable offline. This is a content play rather than a tech product like Google’s recently announced Stadia game-streaming platform. The subscription will provide access to all of the content in the games without ads.
Apple has the benefit of building this directly into the App Store; you’ll be able to access Apple Arcade from a new bottom tab in the App Store app. This may be the company’s best chance at leveraging its strength on iOS to finally build a better home for games on Mac.
The service is coming this fall. Apple oddly didn’t detail pricing, though they did share it would be launching in 150 regions.
