I have no more reasons to keep Apple Arcade

Perhaps last month’s announcement of Fantasian: Neo-dimension wasn’t a particularly huge moment for you — we all have different tastes, and it’s perfectly normal for people to not like good games, I think. For me, it was both great news about a cool game finally escaping the limbo of Apple Arcade exclusivity, but also a moment where I finally asked myself a Big Question I’d been avoiding: Why do I even bother with Apple Arcade?

Like most popular new services, Apple Arcade launched in 2019 with a wave of exciting titles that made the game subscription worthwhile. Five years later, only a few of those games have truly stuck around, like Sharpening stonewhich still gets regular updates (including a huge one this week!). Apple Arcade games are rotated, much like Netflix, and there are fewer and fewer brand new games replacing them, as Apple has made a strong initial investment in mobile games. it is said to have disappeared.

There are still bright spots: the month of Foreigners 2for example, is the rare high-profile mobile game to debut on the service. That’s an exception, though. Apple Arcade’s best additions in recent years have been subscription versions of premium mobile games, like Back to Monkey Island, Retro Bowlor Disney Dreamlight Valley.

In addition to being available on the App Store, many of these games are also available on other platforms, often offering a better experience. And therein lies the problem with Apple Arcade: not necessarily the lack of exclusives, but the way Apple has filled the lack of original titles with ports of games I’d rather play elsewhere. It’s not, like that launch library, filled with interesting mobile-first games. Exclusivity has its uses as a subscription incentive, but the strongest selling point would be a slate of games uniquely suited to the platform they’re on.

Hence my joy about Imaginative‘s gate: it’s just foreign to keep such an aesthetically unique role-playing game exclusive not just to Apple devices, but to Apple’s gaming subscription service without the option to purchase it elsewhere. Without a regular cadence of other titles joining the Apple Arcade exclusivity, the arrangement doesn’t even make sense as a business strategy. It just seems like someone forgot something.

There are certainly people for whom an Apple Arcade subscription still makes sense. If you’re an avid mobile gamer who appreciates the variety of offerings — and Apple Arcade is pretty good at maintaining a catalog of games of all stripes — then cool, what’s $6.99 a month? And that goes doubly for anyone fully invested in Apple’s entire ecosystem; iPhone users are incentivized in multiple ways to subscribe to the six-in-one Apple One bundle for $19.95 a month . But the appeal doesn’t extend much further than that.

For the past few years, curiosity has been the reason I’ve stayed subscribed to Apple Arcade. I wanted to open it up, not just to find something new to play, but to find something that was suitable to play on my phone, something I might not find anywhere else. But for a while now, I’ve just been finding stuff I’d rather play somewhere else. Or worse, stuff I already have.