Can Apple create a game subscription service that will attract game developers with a steady revenue stream?
According to a new report from Cheddar (citing multiple sources), Apple is planning a subscription gaming service. Development is apparently rather early on this “Netflix for games,” so we don’t have any idea what any of the specifics would look like. What would it cost? What’s included? But even knowing nothing about it, I see several serious challenges.
It’s probably safe to assume that the heart of an Apple subscription gaming service would be iOS games—gaming on the Mac exists, but it’s quite small by comparison, and so many Mac games are sold outside of the Mac App Store (through Steam, for example) that a Mac-only game subscription service would be dead on arrival. Gaming on Apple TV is an even smaller market. The inclusion of Mac games could be a bonus incentive, but iOS is where the action is.
Taking a look at our list of the best iOS games of 2018, you’ll find most of them are paid apps. But quality and popularity are different things. When it comes to the games people download the most and spend the most time with, freemium games rule. It’s so lopsided that Apple doesn’t even maintain a single top games list anymore—there are separate lists for top Free and Paid games.
How do the numbers compare? We don’t have download data, but we can get an idea by looking at how many ratings each app has. Looking at Apple’s own top games of 2018 lists, we can see that Minecraft, the second best selling paid iOS game, leads the pack with over 121,000 ratings. Of the 20 games on the top free games list, only one (Twisty Road!) has fewer reviews than that.
Minecraft (at $6.99) is the exception, not the rule. All the top iOS games are free.
