On the evening of September 19, iOS 13 became available on all iPhone models – 6S and younger. IPad owners (mini 4 and newer) will be able to upgrade to their own operating system on September 30, as well as Apple TV owners (they will have tvOS 13). One of the main innovations in iOS 13 is the Apple Arcade service, for which there is a special tab in the AppStore. On Mac, it will appear alongside macOS Catalina.
The idea behind Apple Arcade is simple – pay 199 rubles and get access to a library of mobile games for a month. So far, there are a little more than 100 of them, but in the future the list will be replenished. The first month of subscription is free. All games have one thing in common – there are no microtransactions, no paywall, no conditions like “watch three more commercials and get extra time / goodies in the game”. All content is available – just pay for a subscription once. Moreover, the library contains not only experimental works with minimalist art (like Bleak Sword from Devolver Digital) or typical mobile entertainment for five minutes, like simple puzzles, but also traditional “big games” with beautiful graphics that you expect to see first on consoles. Well, or at least in the AppStore for a fixed price (as ports of old RPGs from Square Enix are still sold). So,Oceanhorn 2 , reminiscent of both the look and the gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, is the flagship RPG for the Nintendo Switch. The games that Apple thinks most attractive are highlighted in mini-selections that you see as soon as you open the service tab. A list of all games – by a separate button, which is located at the very bottom of the tab.
All games have one thing in common – they have no microtransactions and no paywall
Oceanhorn 2
Although all games in the library support touch control, you can connect an Xbox One or PS4 controller for added convenience. In the same Oceanhorn it really helps out. Technically, even the iPhone SE with a tiny (compared to other iPhones) display can play it – it’s still easy to understand what’s going on around the hero. But in order to confidently perform rolls in battles or knock the enemy down with one swing of the sword, swipes on the screen are not suitable.
Apple Arcade has its own exclusives – for example, Frogger in Toy Town (the latest release of the popular Frogger arcade series) or the LEGO Brawls fighting game with 4v4 battles – as in the famous Super Smash Bros fighting game series from Nintendo, but with LEGO men. But some of the games (including “big and beautiful”) will be available on other platforms. For example, stylish Sayonara: Wild Hearts (part runner, part rail shooter, and a little more) will soon receive a port for the Nintendo Switch, and the first Russian game for Apple Arcade – Spaceland (tactics in the spirit of XCOM ) – will appear on Steam on September 30. And the authors of Oceanhorn 2 note that they are ready to think about ports – fortunately, the first Oceanhorn came out on everything.
Sayonara: Wild Hearts
The resemblance of some of the “big and beautiful” Apple Arcade games to console hits is, of course, a reason to joke that the service resembles Apple Music – if Apple Music had albums of cult bands represented by covers or similar-sounding indie tracks. On the other hand, although there are still games in the AppStore for which it is enough to pay once and get all the content, free-to-play games are doing well on the mobile market – with indispensable in-app purchases and gameplay that is optimized for monetization. A famous example of a successful one-time payment game is the puzzle game Monument Valley 2, which earned over $ 10 million in its first year.(with a budget of $ 2.2 million). In comparison, the shareware tactical RPG Fire Emblem Heroes (with relatively soft monetization) made about $ 295 million in its first year thanks to microtransactions. No matter how many users write about paywalls and complain about donation, in the current situation free-to-play is simply more economically profitable. And attempts to sell mobile games for a fixed price stumble, for example, that users are simply not ready to pay for them. Suffice it to recall the storm of indignation caused by the $ 10 price tag for the game Super Mario Run. Some people were not even dissatisfied with the ratio of price and amount of content, but with the very fact – a mobile game for 10 dollars! Where have you seen such prices ?!
And then Apple Arcade enters the scene – with a relatively inexpensive subscription and games, where there are no banners and other tinsel. Where you won’t stumble over a paywall and one hundred and fifty varieties of in-game currency, because they simply do not exist. This is a good attempt to finally return games in their classic form to the market from which they have been ousted until now.
One of my personal favorites at Apple Arcade is Sega’s ChuChu Rocket Universe.
Of course, Apple Arcade also has a downside to all subscription services – the games don’t belong to you. And to be able to access them, you end up paying more than you would pay for one or two of your favorite games. However, this is not very relevant for games with a story-driven campaign that have a clear ending – not many people replay what they have passed at least once.
This is a good attempt to finally return games in their classic form to the market from which they have been ousted until now.
Those who play a lot and for a long time on portable consoles have long made their choice – of course, it is more convenient to play Zelda on the Nintendo Switch, to which joycon controllers are immediately connected, than to play on iPhone imitating Zelda in Apple Arcade ( the variant with a Dualshock 4 or an Xbox controller is poorly compatible with crowds on public transport). But if your smartphone is the main device for everything, this is a good option to access your collection of mobile games without the notorious sore throats.
