Apple Arcade user volume nearly matches Nintendo Switch Online and Steam players

AppleInsider

Apple continues to expand its hold on the gaming market, with a new report showing that 10% of U.S. consumers play Apple Arcade titles weekly.

Image Credit: Apple

Launched in September 2019, Apple Arcade is Apple's video game subscription service. Apple Arcade allows users to pay a flat $6.99 monthly fee to access a catalog of mobile games and features no in-app purchases or advertising.

According to Midia Research, Apple Arcade has steadily grown its fanbase. To date, about 10% of U.S. consumers access the service weekly.

The same data says that Apple's weekly player base is approximately the same as that of Nintendo Switch Online and Steam, with each having 11%. Furthermore, the report highlights that Apple's performance is twice as much as Ubisoft+ and Nvidia's GeForce Now, which have 5% and 4%, respectively.

Currently, players can access Apple Arcade titles on their iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac. However, the Apple Vision Pro will launch with over 100 Apple Arcade titles.

In 2023, Apple Arcade's Hello Kitty: Island Adventure was nominated for The Game Award's Best Mobile Game, but was ultimately beaten out by Honkai: Star Rail.



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macxpress

Now if Apple can expand this type of thing to the Mac with AAA games that would be great. It now has a great silicon platform to do great things with games regardless of what Apple device you have. It's gonna be difficult but with a lot of work it's doable. 

9secondkox2

Too bad the games suck. 

Subscriber numbers in proportion to install SAE area other matter. 

As is actual customer satisfaction with what that subscription provides. 

9secondkox2

macxpress said:

Now if Apple can expand this type of thing to the Mac with AAA games that would be great. It now has a great silicon platform to do great things with games regardless of what Apple device you have. It's gonna be difficult but with a lot of work it's doable. 

Hard part in bold. 

macxpress

9secondkox2 said:

macxpress said:

Now if Apple can expand this type of thing to the Mac with AAA games that would be great. It now has a great silicon platform to do great things with games regardless of what Apple device you have. It's gonna be difficult but with a lot of work it's doable. 

Hard part in bold. 

Yes...Apple will really need to work with the developers to get their games on the Mac in native code and not just some shitty port that runs like complete shit. I think if Apple can get a start on some of the new(er) games written on Metal for the Mac it could just start to take off. The other issue is, there's such a huge notion that the Mac sucks for gaming that people think it will always be that way no matter what. That's another thing Apple has to tackle. It's a tough road ahead but Apple has had many of those before and came out successful, even if it took a few years to get there. 

Ofer

9secondkox2 said:

Too bad the games suck. 

Subscriber numbers in proportion to install SAE area other matter. 

As is actual customer satisfaction with what that subscription provides. 

THIS!!! 💯!

Marvin

macxpress said:

Now if Apple can expand this type of thing to the Mac with AAA games that would be great. It now has a great silicon platform to do great things with games regardless of what Apple device you have. It's gonna be difficult but with a lot of work it's doable. 

This just needs money to start out. Microsoft has their XBox Game Pass, which they spend $1b/year on:

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/12/microsoft-spends-over-a-billion-dollars-a-year-bringing-content-to-xbox-game-pass

They make around $3b/year from the subscriptions (30 million subs @ $10/month - this is across console too).

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-game-pass-console-revenue-revealed-in-microsoft-activision-blizzard-legal-documents/1100-6508137/

There are a few big Mac games:

https://store.steampowered.com/macos

Baldur's Gate 3, Dota 2, Cities Skylines, Stardew Valley, Tomb Raider x 3, Arkham City, Bioshock, Broken Sword, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Hitman, Layers of Fear, Mafia 3, Metro Exodus, Syberia, Splinter Cell Conviction, Witcher 1&2, Resident Evil Village & 4, Death Stranding, No Man's Sky.

^ roughly 30 individual games + iOS games that can run on Mac.

The most expensive PC Game Pass library has 450+ games ($17/month), the lowest ($10/month) has 38 games.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/games#pcgames

Apple likely wouldn't get 30 million subs for Mac but 5-10 million is doable. Say 5m x $7/month = $420m revenue. They'd probably have to make a loss initially if they wanted to get a decent library.

$420m / 30 games = $14m per game. Baldur's Gate 3 reportedly sold over 10m copies ($600m) so for Mac, they'd probably only allow it on a Mac subscription service for $50-100m but they could perhaps negotiate multi-year terms e.g 3 years x $30m per year.

That would get the ball rolling, then devs would start talking about how much they made on Apple Arcade and more ports would be made. If they are open to ports using the porting toolkit at runtime, that would get things moving faster.

If they commit just under $1b/year to it, they can scale it to a decent enough scale like 100-200 games and it will reach 10m Mac subs. It won't be hugely profitable but it adds value to the $30b Mac platform. If it boosts Mac sales a couple of million units at $1300 x 30% margin then it pays for itself, especially when devs start doing more AAA ports to iOS.

macxpress

Yes Apple just needs to invest in this market if it really wants to compete both financially and technically with gaming developers. If it can assist financially and help with engineering when necessary I believe some gaming studios will bite and start development of some AAA games on the Mac. The issue is, Apple says they're serious about gaming and then goes into hiding for a while and then comes back out and says we're serious about gaming, repeat and rinse...

Apple needs to shit or get off the pot and stop dangling the carrot without a proper ending in sight. 

beowulfschmidt

macxpress said:

9secondkox2 said:

macxpress said:

Now if Apple can expand this type of thing to the Mac with AAA games that would be great. It now has a great silicon platform to do great things with games regardless of what Apple device you have. It's gonna be difficult but with a lot of work it's doable. 

Hard part in bold. 

Yes...Apple will really need to work with the developers to get their games on the Mac in native code and not just some shitty port that runs like complete shit. I think if Apple can get a start on some of the new(er) games written on Metal for the Mac it could just start to take off. The other issue is, there's such a huge notion that the Mac sucks for gaming that people think it will always be that way no matter what. That's another thing Apple has to tackle. It's a tough road ahead but Apple has had many of those before and came out successful, even if it took a few years to get there. 

Indeed, the hard part is in bold.  I think if Apple were to work with the Unreal people (and as much as I hate to say it, Unity), along with some of the other engines, to make it easier for games to run on Mac, that would help.

freeassociate2

For fudge sake, all the whingers bleating about AAA games. Maybe you could just recognize that the Apple gaming market is different than PC/console. Stop trying to turn it into a weak clone of what already exists. AAA gaming will come not with Apple working closely with those (highly dysfunctional) gaming studios; but by being ubiquitous in the market, a lá the iOS/iPadOS in the workplace. Market size will bring the studios. In the meantime, it’ll have to evolve the way it does. Much like the console/handheld markets evolved into their particular strengths. My feel is that immersive games through the Vision will power Apple gaming past the competition, giving it a unique strength.

Until then, try appreciating what is already on offer. Clearly a lot of people already do.