Apple Arcade - Gaming on Macs is a thing - Actually has a decent vidya selection.

[LegoTugboat]

Given the overwhelming success of Google Stadia, which was totally not a half-baked rushed measure, and Google Play Pass, which had basically zero media attention, we have their competition.

Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade is a game subscription service unlike any other, with 100+ incredibly fun new games designed with the world’s most innovative developers.

www.apple.com

Apple Arcade launched in September for iOS 13, and was rolled out for tvOS 13 and macOS Catalina later on. It's a subscription gaming service with a month free trial, or $4.99 a month, and Apple does not allow in-app purchases through the Arcade.

The Apple Arcade games are not for sale individually through Apple, but they can be released through other platforms separate from Apple.

Most importantly, though, being online is not required to play them, and progress is kept on the cloud, so you could play them on your Mac, and then play on your iPhone.

The 50 September launch titles were as follows.

Spoiler

• Assemble With Care (usTwo)
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens (WayForward Technologies)
• Grindstone (Capybara Games)
• WHAT THE GOLF? (The Label)
• Card of Darkness (Zach Gage)
• LEGO Brawls (LEGO)
• Patterned (Borderleap)
• Stellar Commanders (Blindflug Studios)
• Where Cards Fall (Snowman)
• Overland (Finji)
• Exit the Gungeon (Devolver Digital)
• Rayman Mini (Ubisoft)
• Spaceland (Tortuga Team)
• Agent Intercept (PikPok)
• Punch Planet (Block Zero Games)
• Sneaky Sasquatch (Rac7 Games)
• Operator 41 (Shifty Eye Games)
• Frogger in Toy Town (Konami)
• Red Reign (Ninja Kiwi)
• Various Daylife (Square Enix)
• Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club)
• Don't Bug Me! (Frosty Pop)
• Oceanhorn 2 (Cornfox & Bros)
• King's League II (Kurechii)
• Explottens (Werplay Priv.)
• Spelldrifter (Free Range Games)
• The Get Out Kids (Frosty Pop)
• Spek. (Rac7 Games)
• Way of the Turtle (Illusion Labs)
• Lifeslide (Block Zero Games)
• Neo Cab (Surprise Attack Games)
• Skate City (Snowman)
• Tint. (Lykke Studios)
• The Enchanted World (Noodlecake Studios)
• Over the Alps (Stave Studios)
• Hot Lava (Klei Entertainment)
• The Pinball Wizard (Frosty Pop)
• Shinsekai Into the Depths (Capcom)
• Word Laces (Minimega)
• Dear Reader (Local No. 12)
• Projection: First Light (Blowfish Studios)
• ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree (Wildboy Studios)
• Big Time Sports (Frosty Pop)
• Tangle Tower (SFB Games)
• Dread Nautical (Zen Studios)
• Mutazione (Die Gute Fabrik)
• Bleak Sword (Devolver Digital)
• Sayonara Wild Hearts (Annapurna)
• Dead End Job (Headup)
• Cat Quest II (The Gentlebros)
• Dodo Peak (Moving Pieces)
• Cricket Through the Ages (Devolver Digital)
• Speed Demons (Radiangames)

The vast majority of the titles have received solid reviews, and there's some quite interesting names in there. Currently, there are over 100 titles in total for iOS and tvOS, with 92 titles for macOS. Annoyingly, Apple doesn't have an independent list, so all the lists of games on Apple Arcade are being compiled by third party sites, like https://www.pockettactics.com/guides/apple-arcade-game-list/

The general consensus is that while there's no killer apps, the vast majority are solid and playable.

So, any of you guys used the service? Any interesting games on the list you've played elsewhere?

 

[Xarpho]

Contrary to popular belief, the old Mac OS prior to around the mid-2000s actually had a good selection. Not as bountiful as what PCs were getting, and most arrived late, but all but a few of the biggest hits made it to Mac, some with upgraded resolution, and there was also a small group of decent shareware made by dedicated developers—not much, admittedly, but definitely more than the Steam/mobile rejects listed here.

 

[byuu]

I can play my crappy phone games on my Macbook too now! Just what I always wanted!

But at least they are getting the subscription model right and not make you pay additional money for every game on top of monthly fees like Google does.

 

[Niggernerd]

MacBooks play ps1 emulators pretty good.

 

[Floop]

Apple Arcade is worth the money. It’s got some cool shit in it. Especially since they allow you to hook up Bluetooth ps4 and xbone controllers to your iOS device now.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is awesome. It’s god damn gorgeous. Awesome soundtrack. Just play it with a controller, touch controls kinda suck dick.
What The Golf is awesome, so just play that.
So is Exit The Gungeon.
And tangle tower.
And recently they added marble it up.
Oh yeah, and hot lava.
I don’t care if I sound like a soy boy consoomer fuck you

 

[Coolio55]

Sayonara Wild Hearts

I still don't know how that even exists. It's so bad it's like a fake game you'd see on Drake and Josh.
You can 100% tell the bugmen behind it give 0 shits about games and are just doing it for hipster points.

 

[Floop]

I still don't know how that even exists. It's so bad it's like a fake game you'd see on Drake and Josh.
You can 100% tell the bugmen behind it give 0 shits about games and are just doing it for hipster points.

PLAY THE FUCKING GAME. I LOVE THAT GAME MORE THAN I LOVE MYSELF.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

MacBooks play ps1 emulators pretty good.

Ummmm reallly? I tried a mac emulator with resident evil 2 and it didn't work so well. The audio quality and framerate of the opening was just so bad

The PS1 port of chrono trigger was a though the audio and video for the opening cutscene were way too nslow for my liking

 

[Niggernerd]

Ummmm reallly? I tried a mac emulator with resident evil 2 and it didn't work so well. The audio quality and framerate of the opening was just so bad

The PS1 port of chrono trigger was a though the audio and video for the opening cutscene were way too nslow for my liking

worked smooth for me, fps never dropped, audio quality was good. My only problem was trying to play games with moon rune chicken scratch because I don't understand it and one game had problems with save states.
Honestly silent hill felt smoother than on me ps1

 

[LegoTugboat]

While the thread's been dead, I'll quickly update it with some news.

I'll add some context on why I think Apple's been so active with Arcade and gaming on Apple devices, also.

Spoiler

So, there's basically 3 reasons why I believe that Apple's done what you'll see below.

The first was Metal, which was a new graphics thing, think DirectX or OpenGL, but specially optimised for iPhone, iPad and Macs.

Blizzard straight up said they wouldn't port Overwatch to Mac because of it, which deeply upset big fruit enough that they tried reaching out. Blizzard still refused. Epic... appeared onstage with Apple during a keynote, praising the virtues of Metal, saying that the game rendered 70% faster then a similar Windows system, and that Fortnite would be fanfuckingtastic on Macs. From that glorious, stable 60 fps high-def video of Fortnite on Mac... Epic proceeded to do nothing more, and the 60 fps dropped to about... 8 on low specs. iOS and iPad can run it no questions asked, but Macs run Fortnite about as well as a 1995 Windows box. This also upset Apple.

Paladins simply couldn't work on Metal. No matter how hard the studio, and Apple, tried to make it, the game simply wouldn't work, so they had to pull modern Mac support.

In addition, there was a moment when Apple teamed up with a big name in vidya, back in 2006-7, which resulted in a couple of really decent updates that drastically increased graphics performance. Trouble was, the big name in vidya is Valve, who... aren't the best at long-term stuff, and promptly got bored.

Now, those are fairly big names, but there's been other names that have done well with Metal, such as Aspyr (handled Civ ports, before Firaxis started doing them inhouse, as well as Sims ports), Feral (modern Tomb Raider series, Life is Strange, Total War, generally considered to be less of a porting company/publisher and more on the verge of witchcraft with how well they do their shit.)

Second was Catalina, and to a lesser extent iOS... 11, I believe, which killed off 32 bit apps. This has naturally taken out a huge chunk of the older (and more modern, Stellaris only became 64 bit in July), vidya library. Catalina and iOS 13 also introduced Metal 2, which also smacked some of the flaws that the original Metal had, and drastically boosted controller support, it's why Apple are focusing so heavily on controllers now.

Third is, in fairness, money. Apple's been pushing a lot of different ways, they've been doing films, TV, etc, so it only makes sense they'd want to get into vidya.

So as a result, information's been leaking about Apple's treatment of indie devs, and, surprisingly, it appears to be goddamn rock solid.

Apple's been reaching out and contacting various indie devs, offering them upfront payments of between $10k to $30k US, in return for porting their titles, and meeting these criteria.

1. The game has to run on two of the following: iOS, macOS, tvOS.
2. The game has to remain exclusive to the Apple Arcade for those OSs. If a game's on Windows or Switch or Playstation, that's fine and they can sell it that way, Apple doesn't care.
3. Game controller support is highly recommended.
4. If the game is going to be exclusive to Apple Arcade and roll out to other systems, the period of exclusivity has to be no shorter than 2 weeks.
5. No in-app purchases.
6. An expectation of the game being updated.

In return, in addition to the $10k to $30k above, Apple offers the following.

1. Advertising. Apple are doing press releases and Youtube videos of what's been released, as well as major updates to games already on the Arcade.
2. Assistance with porting. Apple's made it clear that they really want vidya on there. If you sign the contract and get in trouble with porting a game, you can contact a specialised Apple support rep, no problems.
3. Hosting. Apple hosts your games on their servers. While it's not a great deal, it'll save some hosting costs to the really smaller games.

And surprisingly, it's been paying off. There's been two indies that have admitted that taking the Apple deal has saved them from going bust (one of which had a game that was roughly 80% finished, took the money and finished the game, launched exclusively on Arcade for a month, took the time to port the game to XBL and Switch and make bank), and quite a few that were ignored by publishers, only to take the Apple deal and go "Yeah, we've been contacted by a small company called Apple, they've given us a sack full of cash. Do you want to publish our game now?" and be accepted.

And so far, the response to the question of "Would you publish more games on Arcade again?" has been overwhelmingly "Yes."

So far, the creme de la creme has been Oceanhorn 2, which admits to being influenced by BOTW, and is considered one of the best looking games for Apple systems, with What the Golf, Dread Nautical (by Zen Studios. Yes, the people who crap out pinball games), Super Impossible Road and Cat Quest II also featuring well.

I think why Apple's pushing Arcade so hard, reaching out to indies and larger companies (Sega, LEGO, Square-Enix, etc) is partly as a 'Fuck you Epic and Blizzard, here's what our shit can do, look at what we've got, we have indies wanting to fellate us because we're awesome.

So far, though, Apple Arcade's going pretty well for itself (or at least still has more positive reviews then, say, Stadia), but it is still in the early days, but the regular releases (one of the most recent ones being a Lego version of Monument Valley, which is getting positive reviews) are indeed helping.

Apple has to keep this up, though, they have to keep reaching out to the popular indie game devs, getting them to port their stuff to Arcade, keeping in contact with big vidya and letting them know "Hey, we're around, we're pushing this new system, and even though there's not many Macs around, there's a loooooot of iPhones."

What I'd say to Apple is to do this.

1. For the love of God, update the fucking Apple TV. Bastard's gonna be turning 3 soon.
2. Keep doing the Youtube videos and press releases. Do a top 10 video of the most popular downloaded games for iOS, tvOS and macOS. People love that crap. Do a 'Sneak peak at Apple Arcade for 2020' video as well.
3. Do interviews with indie devs, find out what worked, what didn't. If the interview's overwhelmingly positive, post it on Youtube and throw the link around to the gaming sites.
4. Crossplatform multiplayer. Emphasise it. If we can fire up a racing game or a FPS game and go against other users on other systems, I would weep. Seriously.
5. Update the Apple Arcade site. It's decent at the moment, but I want a section where I can go "What's come out in the past month for Arcade", and have a short list come up, quick description of each.

 

[Floop]

I liked the new Lego game.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lego-builders-journey/id1441636691
It was short and sweet.

 

[XYZpdq]

MacBooks play ps1 emulators pretty good.

Ummmm reallly? I tried a mac emulator with resident evil 2 and it didn't work so well. The audio quality and framerate of the opening was just so bad

The PS1 port of chrono trigger was a though the audio and video for the opening cutscene were way too nslow for my liking

Wasn't there a PS1 emulator for Apples like literally twenty years ago?

 

[Billy_Sama]

I rather mess with an old Apple II.

Not joking, I like playing the MacVenture games on the NES and wanted to play them on the original computer.

 

[LegoTugboat]

Necrobump because Apple did a thing. And a pretty big one.
Fantasian and Wonderbox got released, and...

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-arcade-expands-its-award-winning-catalog-to-more-than-180-games/

Apple Arcade launches its biggest expansion yet, growing its award-winning catalog to more than 180 games​

Exclusive new Apple Arcade Originals games are joined by two new categories, Timeless Classics and App Store Greats, all with no ads or in-app purchases

The breakthrough gaming service adds over 30 games from today’s most celebrated gaming franchises, brands, and creators

In addition to new exclusive Arcade Originals, including “NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition,” “Star Trek: Legends,” and “The Oregon Trail,” the service is introducing two new game categories, Timeless Classics and App Store Greats. Arcade Originals are playable across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. Timeless Classics and App Store Greats are available on iPhone and iPad.

Timeless Classics includes universally loved, quintessential genres with titles like “Good Sudoku by Zach Gage,” “Chess - Play & Learn,” and “Backgammon,” while App Store Greats brings some of the best award-winning games from the App Store to Apple Arcade, including “Threes!,” “Mini Metro,” and “Fruit Ninja Classic,” all ad-free and fully unlocked.

Spoiler

• Backgammon+
• BADLAND+
• Blek+
• Chameleon Run+
• Checkers Royale+
• Chess – Play & Learn+
• Clap Hanz Golf
• Cut the Rope Remastered
• Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition+
• Fantasian
• Fruit Ninja Classic+
• Good Sudoku+
• Mahjong Titan+
• Mini Metro+
• Monument Valley+
• NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition
• Really Bad Chess+
• Reigns+
• Simon’s Cat – Story Time
• Solitaire by MobilityWare+
• SongPop Party
• SpellTower+
• Star Trek: Legends
• Sudoku Simple+
• Taiko no Tatsujin: Pop Tap Beat
• The Oregon Trail
• The Room Two+
• Threes!+
• Tiny Crossword+
• Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker
• World of Demons

Twitter's currently melting down over it, and there's scattered reports of Apple's servers being hit hard. It's crazy.