According to Alex Rofman, 2023 would have been a record year for Apple Arcade, although well, the examples given do not all make our hearts beat faster. gamer. The executive particularly welcomes the launch of Hello Kitty Island Adventure, a “incredibly popular intellectual property that had yet to find its way into the industry” video game.
Advertisement
Arch Fracture
Rofman specifically rejects acidic comments from developers, who recently complained about “smell of death” around the subscription given the reduction in the amounts offered at a bare minimum. “[Apple Arcade] focuses on games designed to be purely fun without worrying about the business model, without timers or video ads. […] We focus on games that couldn't be published elsewhere.“As always, we will have to wait a few years to see if the commercial discourse on the diversity of the catalog corresponds to reality. Lately, the trend is rather towards the escape of exclusives, with the escape of TMNT: Splintered Fate for example.
But The Guardian did its job well, and the English newspaper released the mobilegamer.biz article to confront Alex Rofman with feedback from the field. The director obviously kicks in. “As you can imagine, despite the incredible quality of our catalog, we have over 200 games and not all of them can acquire players every month. […] If you can grow your community, your income will increase accordingly.“A very basic economics course which will not respond to the concerns of developers, particularly regarding projects canceled en masse or even abandoned along the way, since there is no question yet of evaluating public reception. But”games are more important than ever for Apple“, insists Rofman, who points in particular to the new ranges of Macs and iPhones aimed at AAA.
- Also read | Resident Evil 4 will make iPhone and iPad bleed on December 20, 2023
Finally comes the question of the Apple Vision Pro, a very luxurious mixed reality headset which recently enjoyed great popularity before the prohibitive price (3000 pepettes) and poor ergonomics discouraged the curious. Twelve games, such as Assemble With Care or Wordscapes, benefit from native versions to take advantage of the spatialization of content in our environment. And Rofman appears confident. “Spatial gaming is the biggest innovation of the moment. When you think about it, since the invention of touchscreen gaming, we've done relatively little innovating in terms of game design. Graphics are getting better, and TVs are getting thinner, but in terms of gameplay styles and interaction vectors, there hasn't been any innovation in a long time. The Vision Pro opens up a new world of possibilities and it's only the beginning.“
A start with a bad ending since the specialized analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed yesterday that demand for the Apple Vision Pro had already collapsed. The failure of the headset would have led Apple to cancel the renewal of the range planned for the end of 2025 while it reviews its strategy. Bloomberg also conducted its small survey of Apple stores, and Ming-Chi Kuo's analysis would be reflected in a massive decrease in Apple Vision Pro orders on the ground. When Apple Stores were black with curious people in the first weeks, potential buyers would no longer even honor their appointments in store. In short, we will have to work hard to democratize the spatialized gaming and justify its development costs while virtual reality tends to slip.
Advertisement
- Also read | Sony pauses PS VR2 production
- Also read | Virtual reality: the Meta ecosystem opens up to third-party manufacturers