I’m really interested to see where this is going. I use the iPad Pro a lot on a daily basis (not as a laptop replacement, unfortunately) and I’d love to have a good database on console quality games on iOS as well.
Several people involved in the project’s development say Apple is spending several million dollars each on most of the more than 100 games that have been selected to launch on Arcade, with its total budget likely to exceed $500m. The games service is expected to launch later this year.
A lot of people said that if Apple wants to be a real gaming platform, they need to pay for the games the way that consoles pay for exclusives these days.
Also, it’s obvious there’s a really big opportunity for revenues in “console type” gaming even for a company with revenues as big as Apple’s.
Apple has not said how much it will charge subscribers for Arcade or TV+, but analysts at HSBC have estimated that Apple Arcade revenues will grow from $370m in 2020 to $2.7bn by 2022 and $4.5bn by 2024, by which time HSBC predicts it will have 29m users paying $12.99 each month.
The full article, titled “Apple spends hundreds of millions on Arcade video game service“, is available on FT.com. If you don’t have a subscription to read it, just search for the title on Google and go from there.
