Apple Arcade: The Best Mobile Game Subscription, Even 5 Years Later [CNET]

Editors’ Choice: For the price of one console game a year, Apple Arcade gives you access to hundreds of quality games, as well as releases, remasters and updates, all without ads.

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Shelby Brown (she/her/hers) is an editor for CNET’s services team. She covers tips and tricks for apps, operating systems and devices, as well as mobile gaming and Apple Arcade news. Shelby also oversees Tech Tips coverage. Before joining CNET, she covered app news for Download.com and served as a freelancer for Louisville.com.

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Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.

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Apple Arcade

Pros

• Massive selection of games; new games each month
• Subscription cost for a year equals one console game
• Can download and play all games offline
• No ads, upsells or in-game purchases
• One subscription works for you and five other family members

Cons

• Multiplayer modes can be inconsistent
• No flagship game
• Only for Apple devices

Apple Arcade is a mobile gaming subscription service that won’t break the bank and lets you play some of the best mobile games with the people closest to you. Apple launched the service in 2019, and in five years it has polished its service, expanded its catalog and worked with some of the most well-known game developers in the world.

The service costs $7 a month, or $50 annually, and gives you access to a growing library of mobile games which are playable offline and across other Apple devices — some are even playable on the VisionPro. You can even share your subscription with up to five others, making it a great way to game with your friends or family members of all ages.

Apple has marketed the service as a family-friendly gaming alternative that eschews in-app purchases usually found in mobile games. And that has resulted in a library of well-known games like Stardew Valley, exclusive games like Hello Kitty Island Adventure and online shooters like BEAST: Bio Exo Arena Suit Team. And Apple continues to add more games to the library every month, bringing older games and more Arcade exclusives, to subscribers.

All of this is why Apple Arcade is a CNET Editor’s Choice pick for 2024.

Changing the paradigm for mobile games

Before the launch of Apple Arcade, gaming on iOS devices had become a race to the bottom. Nearly all the most popular games on the App Store were either free or 99 cents. These games would make most of their money by charging for in-app purchases and add-ons, or by inserting advertisements. 

As this freemium model came to dominate, it elbowed out some of the best and most creative games from indie studios and small developers. Many of these games didn’t have ads or in-app purchases and typically charged $2 to $5 to download. But their audiences were dwarfed by the freemium titles. The shame of it was that there were a bunch of beautifully designed games with strong gameplay that were getting overlooked because they didn’t fit well in the freemium model. 

At the same time, parents were frustrated because their kids were racking up big bills from in-app purchases or constantly asking for permission to buy tokens or add-ons for the games. Alternatively, kids were getting exposed to unknown content from ads. Above all, these freemium game systems were all about getting kids — and adults — addicted to playing these games and then milking them for more money through ongoing purchases. 

We can look at Arcade as Apple’s attempt to change the environment on its platform for mobile gaming and skew it back toward quality titles, often at the expense of freemium games. Make no mistake, Apple makes a ton of money from taking a cut of all of those freemium micro-transactions. But it’s playing the long game and betting that if it can help quality games to flourish on its platform then it will attract plenty of kids, parents and casual gamers. And since mobile games and casual games are where most of the growth is in gaming, it makes sense that Apple decided to take a stronger hand in the direction of gaming in its massive ecosystem.

The Apple Arcade games catalog

Every game platform rises or falls on whether it has games that people actually want to play. The breadth of Apple Arcade’s catalog, bolstered by consistent new releases and updates, is impressive. There are a ton of different types of games — mystery games, family games, puzzle games, nostalgic games and more. They’re all easy to download from the Arcade tab in the App Store, and you can start a one-month free trial to make sure there are games you’d want to play before you start paying your monthly fee.

One of the biggest challenges that Apple Arcade faced as it got off the ground was that most of its games were original titles from lesser-known developers. There were some exceptions such as Frogger in Toy Town, Lego Brawls and Pac-Man Party Royale, but most of the Apple Arcade games — and the studios that made them — were ones most people had never heard of. 

But Arcade’s catalog has continued to grow since then. It now includes award winning games, as well as titles from well-known creators. The highly anticipated Arcade original Fantasian from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, along with the award-winning Limbo and exclusive games like Sonic: Dream Team all bolstered Arcade’s catalog.

The bottom line is that there’s more than enough to justify the price tag. Just keep in mind that most of the games and gameplay are still phone- and tablet-centric, so they still play like a lot of the premium iOS games from before Arcade. A majority of the games now support third-party controllers, which is a relief to touch-and-drag-fatigued fingers.

At launch, console-style games were few and far between, with notable exceptions like Shinsekai Into the Depths and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Bringing in the popular NBA 2K series was a promising step forward. And Apple’s hardware and software updates over the last year point towards bigger and better things. For example, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max run on the new A17 Bionic chip, which can support more graphic-intense games.

Apple Arcade is a worthy Nintendo competitor for family gaming

Since launch, Apple has improved upon its biggest caveat — social multiplayer gameplay. But the service has plenty of multiplayer options to choose from. For example, Lego Star Wars Castaways — the first online social Lego Star Wars game — and TMNT Splintered Fate both offer a fun multiplayer experience.

Leading up to the launch of Arcade, CNET’s editors — many of whom have a long history covering the games industry — saw it as a threat to the hottest game system of the past couple years, the Nintendo Switch. That’s because both target family and casual gamers. For families, one of the most frustrating parts of the Switch is that in order to play multiplayer games, every Switch user needs to own their own copy of the game. 

One of the best features of Apple Arcade is still that one subscription covers you and up to five other members of a family or friend group. That means it has the potential to be a lot more attractive for families to game together. With the addition of more multiplayer games with social features, gaming with friends and family on Apple Arcade could become more accessible and common.

it could help connect more people for multiplayer matches and signal that your Apple device is also built for gaming.

Apple Arcade is a terrific gaming service that puts hundreds of games at your fingertips, and it adds new games every month to keep you entertained. The fact that you can download a ton of games and run them on a relatively inexpensive device such as the Apple’s 10th gen iPad makes this a great deal for a lot of people and families. It’s limited to Apple devices, but if you’re a family that already uses iPhones and iPads, you’ll find an easy introduction to lots of different types of games, and it can probably save you money.