That “I’m Already Paying for It” Feeling
Apple Arcade nails something beyond the obvious
In an unexpected move, Apple Arcade rolled out early to many folks using the iOS 13 beta. I’m one of those people — as I’m writing this using the software right now in Safari on the iPad! — and so I had a chance to play around with the offering. With a couple hours lost to the ether, I can safely say that Arcade is a fantastic new service. Perhaps Apple’s best to date.
The key to that, of course, is great games. And while I’ve only had the chance to play a few so far, I randomly picked them, and there’s not a clunker to be found, thus far. Each seems beautifully designed and conceptualized in far different ways. Yet, oddly, they all seem to feel like Apple games. Which I think is interesting…¹
Anyway, games — and price — aside, I think there’s another underlying aspect as to why Apple Arcade works. In my view, it’s the concept of “I’m already paying for it” discovery.
That is to say, Apple’s App Store has long been home to many fantastic titles. I know this because every time I visit the App Store, I try to casually check out the latest hot games there. And many of them look fantastic. But the reality is that I don’t end up trying many of them because, well, time. I’ve bought so many iOS games over the years that I don’t play because life and work get in the way. And so I’m hesitant to try any new ones.
But the Apple Arcade model changes this equation — at least in my head. Because I’m already paying for it (or will be, after the free month trial is over), it flips the math from “why?” to “why not?” in my mind. Again, because I’m already paying for this service, I might as well try this new game out.
In that regard, it reminds me of the feeling I often encounter with services like Netflix and especially Amazon.
Because I pay for Netflix each month, I may as well watch another show/movie there versus, say, a movie I could buy on iTunes.² I end up finding a lot of great content this way. And I feel quite good about it, to be honest.
Amazon takes this to another level. Because I pay for Prime each month, I buy things I perhaps don’t truly need, but hey, why not? I know I’m hardly alone in this regard. Which is the genius of the model! And it also extends to content, as I’m constantly checking the Prime TV app to see what’s on — even though I never explicitly signed up for that service. It’s bundled with Prime itself, of course. And so I check it because, why not? I’m already paying for it.
It’s the sunk-cost fallacy, but with a positive connotation!
I expect this to be a massive boon to game developers who get on board with Apple Arcade in the early days.³ It is a true way to combat the race-to-the-bottom we’ve seen with mobile gaming pricing. (I suspect the free-to-play games that rely on in-app monetization will continue to do well and grow, because it’s just a different model, and mentality!) It may work so well, in fact, that the effect may be a mass migration to this service for paid games, and that could blunt the positive effects, eventually at a certain scale (though I suspect both sides will be more than happy in that case).
The only slight hold-up in this entire equation may be the fact that you still have to download each and every game. And many are several gigabytes big. The benefit here is performance, of course. But one could imagine an even more seamless world in which you just stream these games within an Apple Arcade app, perhaps.⁴ This is, of course, the model that Microsoft, Sony, Google and others are going after. I suspect Apple will eventually. For now, let the gaming app downloads bloom and boom.
¹ What if this becomes a genre of games itself? In a way, it probably already has. Again, beautifully designed games built for touch…
² I’m honestly not even sure what we call this type of purchase any more. Is it buying content on “Movies” or “Television” if done on the Apple TV? Or is it still “iTunes” even though that service is fading away?
³ I should clarify: game developers of certain games. I’m not sure this works — or should work — for the massive, marquee titles that you might find on a console or PC. Then again, I’m also not entirely sure it shouldn’t work for those games either!
⁴ Though maybe there would be a branding issue there. Would game developers want to cede their brands to just being a an Apple Arcade game? The current download model gets around that issue quite nicely…