Apple reaffirms faith in Arcade, says Vision Pro included in platform plans

The Apple Arcade will live for as long as Apple wants...which is hopefully a long time.

Talking to The Guardian, senior director Alex Rofman said there's no plans to gut the platform. Back in February, a MobileGamer report claimed developers were frustrated with the company's lack of transparency, and believed the Arcade was on its way out.

Rofman pushed back against those claims, saying games "are more important to Apple now than [ever]. Arcade is an outlet for indie studios with creative, innovative ideas. That is still important to us and always will be."

Regarding those alleging smaller payouts, Rofman acknowledged bonuses depend on a game's player count. Bluntly, he said "not every game in a catalogue of more than 200 titles [will] grow its player base month over month."

2023 was a "banner year" for the Apple Arcade, and Rofman made clear the company wants to continue that momentum. Part of that means bringing the Vision Pro headset deeper into the game fold.

The AR headset launched with 12 games, some of which had spacial elements baked in. Such types of games are what Apple hopes makes the Vision Pro a prime device for VR players.

Spacial gaming is "probably the biggest thing right now," said Rofman, since it's the biggest innovation to how games are played since touch gaming in the mid-2000s. As such, the Vision Pro "opens up an entirely new world of possibilities."

And should it not succeed, other Apple devices are at a point where they can pick up the slack.

"Finally, Macs are capable of running high performance games, in ways that they weren’t 10 or 15 years ago," added Rofman. "You can now run a high-performance game on a device that fits in your pocket."

"I think you’ll continue to see investment and focus on the gaming space, because games are incredible and our devices are great gaming devices.”

The Guardian's full write-up of the Apple Arcade, including talks with developers making games for the platform, can be read here.