Apple is reportedly spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” for its upcoming video games subscriptions service called Apple Arcade, according to an exclusive report by Financial Times which quotes unidentified people familiar with the deals. Apple had announced the Arcade gaming subscription service along with its Apple TV+ and Apple News+ services at a special event back in March.
Based on what Apple has revealed, all games in the Arcade subscription, which will be added as a dedicated tab on App Store, will be exclusive to the service and the company is itself working with the gaming studios and developers to create these titles.
According to the Financial Times report, Apple will spend several million dollars on the 100 or more video games and the total budget could stand at $500 million. It also looks like the company will offer developers some extra incentive for exclusivity on the iOS platform.
While developers will be able to release the same game on computers or other gaming consoles like Nintendo Switch or Sony PlayStation a few months after launch, Apple will offer the ‘extra incentive’ when players withhold release of the game from Google’s Android or Microsoft’s Xbox game pass, notes the report.
It looks like Apple wants to keep the games limited to its iOS platforms, and even if the games were released to others, it wants to keep rivals Google and Microsoft out of the loop for these games.
Apple has refused to comment on the report. The company is yet to reveal the price for the monthly Arcade gaming service, which is expected the roll out in the fall of 2019. The gaming service will work on iOS and macOS as well, and users will be able to play the game on the iPhone and iPad and then pick up on their MacBook and vice-versa.
