Apple Arcade is changing video games for $5 a month

Apple Arcade is here after a lot of talk, but what exactly is it? [MUSIC] At its most basic level, Apple Arcade is going to appear to you as a new tab in the App Store, whether it's on an iPhone through iOS or on an iPad, on a Mac or even on Apple TV. And all of these App Stores Under the Apple Arcade tab, you're gonna find a specialized collection of games, about 100 to start, and they're all available, instead of picking and choosing, for 4.99 a month, you just get access to that entire catalog. Now what makes this a little bit different from just picking and choosing games from an app store or as you go, whether they're free to play games or games that cost a few dollars Is that this list of games is curated by Apple in order to provide you with let's say what they call a very premium collection that encompasses both very traditional core games, very casual games. The kind of games you'd see on a mobile phone and some games you'd maybe see on a console. Some that use AR, some that use motion controls, some that use traditional controllers. It really runs Of the entire gallant. Some of the early games that we've seen certainly feel a lot like phone games now, maybe the kind that you get for free under a freemium model and pay for extras. But here everything is just included under that all you can eat five dollar a month price. Which covers everyone in your app store family group. Now the potential difficulty here is that these games have to be designed to work both on an iPhone and on an iPod and the Mac whether it's a Macbook or an iMac and on your Apple TV. And that's a lot of different control schemes to think of, a lot of different screens. A lot of different types of processing power in those machines. So the first wave of Apple arcade games that we've seen, they feel a little bit like games from the mobile side of things. A lot of them are 2D. A lot of them are side thrillers. A lot of them feel like the sort of games you'd play. In a subway while you're waiting to get your stop on your iPhone. Fewer of the more expansive full console style games, although we have seen a couple of those, and those certainly looked very cool and very impressive. We've also seen some that play with ideas of augmented reality using the cameras within the devices. And we've seen some that really rely heavily on traditional gamepad not something you're used to using. On an Apple device. In fact, under the latest version of iOS, you can use an Xbox controller or a PlayStation controller through Bluetooth. There are few other specialized controllers out there. But all the games are designed to be playable no matter which platform you're playing on, which means that they basically have to work with something like The Apple TV remote control, to get a lot of different types of control systems, and games that can switch back and forth. Some are single player, some are multi-player, some have local multi-player, online-multi-player, there's really a big variety there. And we're certainly looking forward to some of the more expansive games with some big names behind them Will Wright, legendary designer of SimCity is working on a game for the system. Dave Gibbons, the artist who drew Watchmen has a game that he's working on and there are a few other big names. A lot of those are not part of the launch lineup but hopefully they'll be coming soon. Much like Netflix has invested a bucket of curated original content that works on phones and tablets and laptops and TVs [UNKNOWN] here is investing in a curated collection of content that works on phones, tablets, and laptops and TVs. What they really do here is solve one of the largest problems of any type of app store, which is discoverability. Where there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of different types of apps and games, and on any platform, 99% of them are just not gonna be things you're interested in. Either they're low quality or they're just not what you're looking for. So the best case scenario here is Atlas said we've hand picked these games because we think a lot of people are going to like them. And that is certainly a better way to get a good experience of probably the limited gaming time that you have, rather than going through 10s or dozens of free to play games in the App Store download and each one trying it out saying that's not for me moving on, never coming back to it again. Cutting out some of that you get to just enjoy premium games from top flight developers and publishers and hopefully spend more time gaming and less time searching, downloading, deleting and doing it all over again. One potential stumbling block. Subscription for tea, people subscribe to things like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime and Xbox Live and Nintendo's online switch service and each one is a few dollars a month. But we certainly have a lot of subscriptions to juggle. So if you're a mobile gamer, this is probably gonna be high up on your list. If you're a traditional console gamer, you're probably gonna wanna check out some of the more hardcore, some of the more traditional living room style games before you commit. But there is a one-month free trial for you to go and try it all out. The one thing that's always true in video games is that things are always changing And the big paradigm shift I think that's happening now through Apple, but through other other companies also is that we're finally separating the concept of the specialized hardware and the games that are matched to that specialized hardware like you needed to have specifically This Xbox if you wanted to play this game, or this graphics card, if you are wanting to run this software, what Apple is saying here is that you can just take your iPhone or your iPad or your laptop or your Apple TV and play any of these games and get generally the same experience. And your seats will be up in the cloud. So you can just pick up wherever you were, no matter what device you pick up. Google stadia is promising something very similar. Where you just log in through basically their browser based interface and play these games in the stadia platform on any laptop device. Even if it's not a gaming laptop. And I think that provides a lot more flexibility for gamers long term where you think more about the games and less about the hardware.