Yepppp. I don't know anyone that likes the fact that tons of app developers have already been trying to implement subscription models to get people to pay for mobile software. I get why devs are doing it (they have to continuously update their products so they work with the latest versions of iOS and Apple hardware, and that costs money), but no one's happy about it.
While it's nice that Apple Arcade is a better value proposition (in theory) by bundling a bunch of games into a single subscription, they'll have to do more than just put good games on it to convince a large audience it's worth buying into. Curious to see if Apple is anticipating this reality or not.
If not, I could easily see Apple's solution to goosing Arcade's numbers being a price structure that bundles Arcade into existing Apple subscriptions. Again though, info is scant.
While it does create some problems for archiving games, something the App Store struggles with already, it should also be noted that most games will surely be temporary exclusive to Apple Arcade and thus be available as standalone purchase afterwards.
For the subscriber then, this is kinda hard to beat as a proposition. You get plenty of premium, no iAP, no usage tracking games in a wide variety of genres with excellent developers already familiar with mobile (seriously the indie lineup is out of this world and features almost every amazing indie developers that brought games to mobile for the last five years) and featuring cross-platform connectivity and controller support under one subscription possibly for something as low as $9.99 with plenty more added over time.
As I see it, the problem is more with how you pay the devs and how to create a sustainable economy for them. But at least on mobile, it doesn't seem like there's a way to grow premium mobile gaming without such a system. The past shows that anything not free won't get the traction it needs to survive except for a few indie devs. As such, plenty have fled to Nintendo's Switch hence the drought in releases in 2018 and early 2019. We even got games like Civilization VI soon after its PC release as a full, paid app and that also seemed to have failed.
I do think that the history of the App Store shows that on that scale nothing but a backed Apple initiative will work with a curated system. Subscription seems like the logical way to go here and should offer some amazing value for the players. In the end, this is the "Premium App Store" that has been rumored since at least iOS 7 or 8.
A bundle of all the announced subscriptions will surely be available though or they're letting plenty of money on the table.
