Apple’s new app is DOA because they don’t care enough about gaming

Rumors are flying fast ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 9. While much of the attention has centered around a design overhaul for the company’s operating systems, and the likelihood of them switching to a year-based naming scheme, another thing reportedly in the works is a new gaming app. As described by Bloomberg, this should be available across platforms, acting as both a launcher and a replacement for Game Center. None too coincidentally, you’ll also see promotional content related to things like Apple Arcade.

As someone who’s covered the Apple beat for well over a decade at this point, I’m not expecting the app to move the needle when it comes to Mac and iOS gaming. It could make some aspects more convenient, but it won’t fix any of the issues relegating games on Apple platforms to a second-class experience. If anything, Apple seems to be repeating a familiar pattern of failed attempts to boost its prospects.

Patching holes in the Hindenburg

Apple’s beleaguered history with gaming

Halo Studios

Somehow Apple has struggled with gaming for decades, rarely seeming to make the right moves. I won’t go over the company’s complete history, but time and again, it’s had opportunities to seize the day that it tossed aside. Consider, for example, just how popular the Apple II was with schools — there are entire generations of kids who grew up on Math Blaster and The Oregon Trail, yet the company missed the chance to spin that into something greater. Another example involves Bungie’s breakthrough shooter, Halo. It was originally a Mac exclusive — introduced by Steve Jobs himself, at Macworld 1999 — but Microsoft later swooped in and bought Bungie, turning Halo into a flagship for the original Xbox. Supposedly, Jobs turned down an initial invitation for a Bungie takeover, only changing his mind when he learned that Microsoft was moving in, as Ars Technica explains.

In more recent times, a familiar pattern has emerged. Apple will announce new hardware or software products — such as developer APIs, or console-quality iPhone GPUs — and demonstrate new games running on them, waxing poetic about its commitment to gaming. Inevitably, however, iOS continues to be dominated by cookie-cutter games loaded with ads or microtransactions, while Mac gamers are lucky to get a fraction of the titles available on Windows PCs. You won’t be playing the latest Doom or Call of Duty game on an iMac.

Game Center alone has undergone multiple updates that accomplished nothing. In 2020, for instance, it got a revamped in-game dashboard, and an improved leaderboard system. But I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone talk about using Game Center, let alone caring about its rankings or achievements.

I’m betting that the new app will be a genuine improvement on Game Center, given the amount of talent at Apple. But without changes to the company’s overall attitude and strategy, it’s the equivalent of building a spiffy Rivian-style showroom to sell your collection of rusted Gremlins.

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Apple’s core issues

What the company really needs to solve instead

Count Master/ Pocket-lint

Before anything else, Apple executives need to start treating gaming as a priority rather than incidental. Steve Jobs infamously dismissed the significance of gaming, and that tradition has largely carried on under current CEO Tim Cook. This is despite games being one of the primary drivers of App Store revenues, not to mention the cash being raked in by the game industry as a whole. In 2023 alone, the industry amassed some $406 billion — 18% more than the movie and music industries combined (per The Drum). In that light, it’s bizarre that Apple often spends more time talking about mediocre AI features or Apple TV+ shows when it holds press events.

Perhaps the biggest functional obstacle to growing gaming on Apple platforms is how the company divides App Store income. With a 30% cut on most transactions, and the reluctance people have to spend more than $10 (if that) upfront on mobile apps, it’s often economically impossible for developers to turn a profit without relying on ads and/or microtransactions. That results in games designed around encouraging those interactions, rather than on what’s actually fun to play. Indeed, many developers put in a bare minimum of effort, knocking off popular game mechanics without even trying to spruce up graphics. There’s a reason there are so many match-three games out there — and why Epic Games was willing to go to court to open up outside payments for Fortnite. To make the App Store attractive to the best game studios, Apple may need to wave the white flag in its long-standing battle against loosening policies.

Another consequence of Apple’s philosophy is that it doesn’t bother building hardware around gaming. The latest iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs are solid on a performance level, but Apple doesn’t sell a single first-party gaming accessory, leaving that to firms like Razer and Backbone. Meanwhile, as much as Macs have benefited from Apple Silicon, what they can play is inherently limited without access to the dedicated graphics cards in many PCs. M-series Macs don’t even support external GPUs, which seems ridiculous given how much marketing Apple devotes to professional graphics and video.

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Is there any hope for serious change?

Mostly hypothetical

id Software

Unfortunately, I doubt that Apple is going to do a 180 anytime soon. If anything, Apple is still fighting tooth-and-claw to block access to third-party stores and payment systems on mobile devices, no matter that Macs and PCs have supported them for ages. Arguably, PC gaming wouldn’t be where it is today without storefronts like Steam. It’s probably going to take a total legal defeat or new US regulations to force Apple to (permanently) adopt more gamer-friendly policies.

One recent development could point to an alternate way forward: Apple’s acquisition of RAC7, the team behind Sneaky Sasquatch. On its own that doesn’t mean much, since it’s Apple’s first game studio, and only a two-person team. But one of the reasons Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are such juggernauts is that they have large internal studios, guaranteeing high-profile releases for their platforms. If Apple decided to acquire bigger studios of its own, it could potentially build up a large enough audience that it wouldn’t have to panic about payment methods or splits — it would be generating money from its own games, and players and developers would naturally want to be on the App Store. Steam quickly became dominant because it was the only place you could get Valve’s own PC games, like Half-Life 2 or Left 4 Dead. Maybe Apple will finally take the hint.

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