Apple Arcade has been out about a month now, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about it.
First, on the plus side: It is a really good offer. They have a fantastic lineup, and for five dollars a month, it’s a bargain. I especially love that they have some games in there that probably would not be viable otherwise, Over the Alps being one of my favorites right now.
However, this comes with a downside: It will become much harder to compete outside of Arcade.
I’ve developed and self-published an iOS game earlier this year. When it came to monetarization, I decided to go for a freemium/shareware approach: The first third of the game is free, and the rest can be unlocked with a one-time purchase. Unfortunately, this was not successful. I’ve since changed to a (cheaper) pay-upfront model. This has gained a little more attention, but not that much to be worthwhile either.
The popular way to monetize these days is through ads and consumable in-app purchases, combined with arbitrary limitations: Either wait ten minutes for your upgrades, or pay up. And to ensure you don’t notice how much they fleece you, they make you pay with diamonds or coins or some other pretend currency, which you buy with real currency at some indecipherable rate. This seems to be successful - after all, lots of the most successful games are doing it - but that is not a business I want to be in. I want to design games, not slot machines.
So my niche for premium games will shrink, if not disappear. If Arcade continues to grow their lineup as they have, people will pay even less for games than they are doing now. And on the other side, the ‘free’-to-play makers will have to double down with their games as well to compete with Arcade, which will make it even harder to gain any traction in the market. So even if this makes selling my games harder, it’ll at least send more great games my way.