During GDC this past March, Apple dropped a bombshell when they announced Apple Arcade, a premium gaming subscription service that would grant subscribers access to more than 100 games across their iOS, Apple TV, and Mac devices. A premium gaming service had been rumored for some time, but what I found most shocking about the Apple Arcade announcement (besides the fact that Apple was doing something serious with gaming) was that Apple themselves would be ponying up the dough to help their hand-picked selection of developers to create games for the service, apparently to the tune of half a billion dollars or so. While specifics around how these deals are structured are few, it sort of seems that Apple was turning their money hose onto some of the most talented developers around and just spraying them with cash to create cool things for Apple Arcade. It’s unclear how much, if any, say-so Apple has in how these games are created, unlike how many traditional publishers operate. And, while every game on Apple Arcade must be exclusive to the service for at least some nebulous amount of time, many have already been announced to be coming to multiple platforms in the future. So in a very strange way Apple has become sort of a multi-platform video game financial backer. Which is weird.
Anyway, Apple had announced that Apple Arcade would be launching in the fall of this year, and it was pretty easy to assume that would be alongside the launch of iOS 13 and the new iPhon...