Yeah they’re less about actual route planning and more managing the problems you’ve got. Motorways adds some really neat things to manage the flow of traffic, I can see myself sinking a lot of time into it.
Hmmmmmm. That’s really interesting. Now I’m wondering how they’re checking for a subscription as the verbiage on the sub is “Your service ends immediately.” Perhaps that’s just the free trial and it’s different in the pay mode.
Mini motorways is the hook for me so I’ll try the trial at least.
I hope the devs are getting well paid in these early stages. If Apple wants their service to be a success then they need killer apps out of the gate. If you’re a dev that can provide them then you’ve got a strong bargaining position to make bank.
The no iap thing concerns me. It’s a noble goal, but what I see on xbox game pass is a lot of games with iap in the form of more traditional expansion content. You get the game for ‘free’ then can pay a significant amount more to get more legitimate content for games you don’t own. This also seems to have opened the door for premium currencies etc. I don’t know if xbox had a no iap policy, but it wouldn’t make sense for them to host a game like Stellaris without also offering the expansions for sale.
On the subject of subscriptions I use Apple Music offline all the time. I’m also weird and cancel my subscription shortly after I get it so I’m not charged another month. Works with xbox game pass too. I hope to continue this practice with Apple Arcade.
We’re going off on a tangent, here, but how does Apple Music work offline? I thought it streamed the music?
I assume it’s how most subscriptions work these days - even if you cancel before the end of the month, you’ve got the license until a certain date, so your device should have some sort of signifier it checks against. Once past that date you wouldn’t have access until you reconnected to let it know you’ve renewed.
You can download the music to your device so you’re not using data 
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You can download the tracks. There are premium streamed stations as well.
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Wait … I feel like I should know this one … does Apple Arcade require iOS 13? Or is just being introduced at the same time?
Both my phone and my pad are not, shall we say, very young, so I’m a bit worried.
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Yes, it is only out for the iPhone right now, as the iPad is not updated to iOS 13 yet. The iPad is still on 12.4.1
It automatically it is a new tab in the App Store that is only updated with 13.
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Yeah, I think I panicked when I didn’t see how to activate it.
Downloading 13 now.
Thanks for the help.
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I’m cautiously optimistic about what Arcade will mean for games on apple devices. The launch seemed to include a who’s who of iOS indie developers. I’m hoping more good, innovative stuff gets made, and not another F2P game with a $99.99 IAP. This will probably come down to the sustainability of the business model. I’ve not seen anything definitive about how developers get paid.
On the consumer side, $4.99/mo for 6 members of the family is a serious value proposition. Especially since it reduces the worry the kids will download a skinner box/slot machine disguised as a game.
One a personal note, it doesn’t seem to met one of my hopes, which was to help with the sorry state of gaming on the AppleTV. Most of the ones I’ve looked at in Arcade are iPhone and iPad-only.
Scattered thoughts:
Discovery on arcade sucks. I want some view which shows me every game on the service with a one- or two-sentence description of the genre and gameplay. Apple thinks I want seven different ways of seeing ten games at a time in overlapping categories, but each game listed with little more than a big screenshot or even the icon.
Lots of these games have been awesome to try, but I won’t want to really try playing them until they’re on iPad. Overland is a great example.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is charming the pants off of a bunch of people who aren’t me. It’s pleasant enough that I don’t mind it, but I have never liked either of its major mechanics: quick-time events and following a curving path you cannot see, but can deviate within.
The polygonal aesthetic is widespread and pretty nice. I am hoping for more variety as the service matures.
This is a superb deal for families. A bunch of what’s on there will be great for my kids, and is likely to displace some much more costly gaming purchases like Pokémon Sword or Link’s Awakening. If it does even one of those, it’s paid for itself for half a year.
There seem to be a lot of easy to pick up, attractive games with light puzzling elements. Assemble with Care, for example, appears to be a polygonal, nice The Room.
Dear Reader is the closest thing I’ve seen to a word game, and there’s not much game. Mostly I’m just reading Jane Austen so far, with light gameish elements to add spice. It’s rather like going for a hike while playing Pokémon Go. But Austen’s pretty clever and I’ve never read her work, so I’m cool with it. It seems like Apple Arcade would be a great fit for a crossword (or some other puzzle) of the day, though, and I’m a little surprised they don’t seem to have gone that direction yet. There seems to be a bit of a hole in that space on the service, and it seems like a natural way to get people who don’t think of themselves as gamers signed up for a service which makes them think it might be worth exploring.
The Pinball Wizard makes me very happy, but also wish I weren’t terrible at pinball.
Overall, I expect Overland and Card of Darkness to have legs, while everything else I’ve tried is aiming at a brief but neat diversion. Which is pretty sensible for a subscription service–try a bunch of weird, short stuff, and if it works well, make a sequel. Feeling like they’ve paid for the privilege will make lots of people willing to try your stuff, so barrier-to-entry concerns shouldn’t prevent big risks.
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Has anyone tried Shantae yet? I love the series on console.
You can see all games in a single list (with brief video and description) is you press the see all button AT THE END of the Arcade page.
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Not all that enthused by Apple Arcade myself. But I can see how great it is for those interested in the kind of games it seems to be offering. Already mentioned is that families benefit well from the open availability of the game. But then there’s others, like myself, that just aren’t interested.
I’m happy for Apple Arcade to stick around at the place it seems to be in the market, but I know it’s a matter of time until just one title I’m interested launches there first, and so I’ll have to by a subscription for just one game mixed with a plethora of what doesn’t interest me. That’s the polarising factor seemingly of this Apple Arcade. If you’re someone whose taste in games is just on the edge of their offering, you may well have to sign up and seemingly waste money, when you could’ve had the game outright.
At the moment I’m interested in digital board games, and roguelites/likes, more towards the ‘AAA’ side of those which Apple Arcade doesn’t seem to be providing this far, but it may just be a matter of time before something I desperately wanted creeps in to the arcade shackles.
Please Megacrit, whatever you do, please do not launch Slay the Spire on Apple Arcade!! (That’s how I now feel thinking about any game launch I’m interested in in the future).
Some people actually liked freemium and some people didn’t, not to draw comparison exactly but now we have Apple Arcade, and some people like it, and some people just plain don’t. Each to their own I guess.
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I like the idea of the sub service, but personally won’t be subbing.
Current phone is getting poor on battery life and I can’t be f’d getting a new one yet
For those families fortunate enough to have iOS hardware current enough to run iOS 13 / iPadOS, this sounds like a steal! As you say, mix in the opportunity to raise a new generation of young brains, that are still developing, on games that are designed to be enjoyable to play, rather than so much of the current FTP IAP crop that are seemingly designed towards stimulating enjoyment from loot boxes and cash shops, with pay walls and poor level design requiring cash shop boosters, it would be almost criminal not to take a family subscription! 
I have a dream where gamers exposed to quality, premium, games on Apple Arcade reject the garbage cluttering up the app store, only willing to spend their gaming time, and money, on quality games, like many folks are willing to do on the Nintendo Switch platform. 
A more reasonable expectation might be that we see an emphasis on iOS gaming from Apple going forward, hopefully. I’m encouraged by Game Center getting a little love in iOS 13. After the Game Center app was removed a few years ago Game Center felt unsupported by Apple, and with not all developers taking advantage of what features it still did have to offer. I’m personally hoping we’ll see a greater emphasis by Apple and developers on iCloud saves and device sync’ing.
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True, but A) a list which is itself presented smaller and later than many other browsing options is itself not very discoverable, and B) the “description” varies widely in utility. Videos aren’t a terrible idea, but they ought to put out some Apple-standard fascist guidelines according to which they can be no more than seven seconds and must feature illustrative gameplay, and then have them autoplay in the list.
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Oh well…don’t get me wrong…there are TONS of ways to make it better (like putting it at the start of the list, not the end).
At least it’s there…I discovered it by pure chance.
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