General Gaming Apple Made 8.5 Billion in 2019 On Gaming...

[skillzdadirecta]

more than Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Activision COMBINED.

 

Apple Made More Money on Games Than Xbox, Sony, Nintendo and Activision Combined in 2019 - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

---

Apple is reportedly on top when it comes to video game revenue, despite not developing consoles or major AAA games of its own.

 

[TwinIon]

Hence why they're putting so much effort into keeping their cut of app store payments.

[skillzdadirecta]

20 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Hence why they're putting so much effort into keeping their cut of app store payments.

[Ghost_MH]

22 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Hence why they're putting so much effort into keeping their cut of app store payments.

 

You sure about that? I swear I remember Apple saying they have no idea how much they made from the App Store. How would they even know they made these billions off gaming?

[ort]

It's crazy how well they've done considering how utterly bad they are at it.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 minute ago, ort said:

It's crazy how well they've done considering how utterly bad they are at it.

That's what's so shocking to me. Apple could easily integrate some type of console like service into their existing ecosystem and dominate. A combination. Apple TV/ Console that allows you to stream games to your iphone/ipad? That shit would be an instant seller.

[ort]

I think the problem is that the way they make all of this money is off of super scuzzy "free-to-play" games.

 

They could also dominate in addition to that, but that's where 80% of this cash comes from. Selling overpriced gems in games that are carefully balanced to manipulate you into buying gems rather than crafted for actual fun.

 

All of the things they would have to do to become a real player and become a influential power player in the world of gaming would actually cost them money in the long run.

 

It's actually better for them to just stand back and let it be the wild west.

[Mercury33]

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

That's what's so shocking to me. Apple could easily integrate some type of console like service into their existing ecosystem and dominate. A combination. Apple TV/ Console that allows you to stream games to your iphone/ipad? That shit would be an instant seller.

Except they have generally completely sucked at any sort of new innovation since Jobs passed away. I am 100% confident if they tried that it would fail miserably. 

[Bacon]

"Games made to nickel and dime you made more than games that don't."

 

Push MTX as hard as mobile games do and I'm sure you'd see a major increase. Games like WoW already make more off WoW tokens and store mounts than they do subs. Then, more people own phones than own consoles or PCs. 1 out of 5 people in my family(parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles) own consoles. 5 out of 5 own a smartphone. 

[Keyser_Soze]

A lot of people subscribe to Apple Arcade and forget they are  subscribed.

[nublood]

Man, what a depressing statistic. I bet I haven’t even spent $20 on mobile games…

 

In my lifetime.

 

 

[Kal-El814]

18 hours ago, ort said:

It's crazy how well they've done considering how utterly bad they are at it.

 

I mean… they’re bad at what people who post here consider gaming, yes. Absolutely. But that definition has always been narrow, and even though gaining is getting more popular, this segment of gamers takes up a smaller part of the pie.

 

Call of Duty has sold 400 million life to date earlier this year. In January 2021 there were more 199 million monthly users of just Roblox, but almost nobody here cares about it enough to talk about it.

 

So I don’t know that Apple is “bad at gaming” insomuch as they are bad at gaming the way that we here prefer to game. I don’t think mobile gaming is any “lesser than,” it’s just different.

 

14 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

A lot of people subscribe to Apple Arcade and forget they are  subscribed.

 

I think this is true, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who are XBL / Game Pass / PS+ subscribed and forget that, too.

[Chris-]

18 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

That's what's so shocking to me. Apple could easily integrate some type of console like service into their existing ecosystem and dominate. A combination. Apple TV/ Console that allows you to stream games to your iphone/ipad? That shit would be an instant seller.

I’d be extremely bearish on that idea; Apple’s target market isn’t the type to buy a dedicated gaming platform, and to the extent Apple ever integrates gaming into their platforms, it has to be secondary more or less by default. You are thinking about it from the standpoint of someone who sees the value/utility in a dedicated console, and that’s…not whose driving most of their gaming business. 

[skillzdadirecta]

22 minutes ago, Chris- said:

I’d be extremely bearish on that idea; Apple’s target market isn’t the type to buy a dedicated gaming platform, and to the extent Apple ever integrates gaming into their platforms, it has to be secondary more or less by default. You are thinking about it from the standpoint of someone who sees the value/utility in a dedicated console, and that’s…not whose driving most of their gaming business. 

I'm thinking if they intergrated gaming functionality into Apple TV for instance, it could totally work for them. I know people who have Apple TV now and would game on it especially if it had some decent games and they didn't have to buy a 400/500 dollar console. It would be a no brainer for them. They make so much money on gaming now because so many people already have Iphones and Ipads and don't have to buy more hardware. I'm not even thinking a new piece of hardware although they could probably pull that off too if they wanted, especially if they really sold it as being part of their existing ecosystem. I would be surprised if they weren't already working on something like this. Why not? They make a ton of money in gaming now without even really trying.

[Chris-]

Just now, skillzdadirecta said:

I'm thinking if they intergrated gaming functionality into Apple TV for instance, it could totally work for them. I know people who have Apple TV now and would game on it especially if it had some decent games and they didn't have to buy a 400/500 dollar console. It would be a no brainer for them. They make so much money on gaming now because so many people already have Iphones and Ipads and don't have to buy more hardware. I'm not even thinking a new piece of hardware although they could probably pull that off too if they wanted, especially if they really sold it as being part of their existing ecosystem. I would be surprised if they weren't already working on something like this. Why not? They make a ton of money in gaming now without even really trying.

Doesn’t Apple TV have some gaming functionality already? In any case I just don’t see it driving much in the way of demand…Google and Amazon have already tried and it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Just different market dynamics compared to the rest of the industry. 

[skillzdadirecta]

Just now, Chris- said:

Doesn’t Apple TV have some gaming functionality already? In any case I just don’t see it driving much in the way of demand…Google and Amazon have already tried and it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Just different market dynamics compared to the rest of the industry. 

It does but they don't really push it. You can buy a controller and play games from apple arcade on it but again, they haven't really pushed the gaming aspect of it much. Amazon seems to be doing pretty well with New World and I'd be surprised if the success of that game doesn't encourage them to do more in the gaming space. Google? Not so much with Stadia.

[ort]

They launched the Apple TV with really confusing and dumb rules that forced all games to be compatible with the remote. You could not make a controller only game. It was all downhill from there. Now that every TV has smart functionality built in (including apples own tv service) and/or you can get a competitor box that is just as good for 25% of the price of an Apple TV, I think the window of opportunity has passed them by.

 

I think all developers have abandoned it because it literally makes zero money and is a waste of time because Apple doesn't do anything to promote it as a game console.

 

I think if you made a list of the top 50 things Apple cares about, the Apple TV hardware may have trouble even cracking that list.

[TwinIon]

I think a lot of the problem with Apple doing something that more resembles traditional gaming systems is that it glosses over that Apple is the iPhone company first and foremost.

 

Yeah, they could throw any recent A-whatever chip in an Apple TV and it would be plenty powerful enough to be a console. They could just sell a bundle with a controller and it would probably do just fine. What that wouldn't do is sell more iPhones or otherwise leverage the iPhone ecosystem. The Apple TV exists almost purely as a way to extend the iPhone into the living room.

 

Any meaningful push by Apple into gaming needs to put the iPhone front and center or they won't care enough to see it through. It's basically a question of scale. The iPhone is at such a scale that anything else is peanuts by comparison.

[Ghost_MH]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

I mean… they’re bad at what people who post here consider gaming, yes. Absolutely. But that definition has always been narrow, and even though gaining is getting more popular, this segment of gamers takes up a smaller part of the pie.

 

Call of Duty has sold 400 million life to date earlier this year. In January 2021 there were more 199 million monthly users of just Roblox, but almost nobody here cares about it enough to talk about it.

 

So I don’t know that Apple is “bad at gaming” insomuch as they are bad at gaming the way that we here prefer to game. I don’t think mobile gaming is any “lesser than,” it’s just different.

 

 

I think this is true, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who are XBL / Game Pass / PS+ subscribed and forget that, too.

 

I often wonder if this shit is perpetually sustainable. The things that make Apple and Roblox so much money is based on practices that are exploitative by design. You kind of get the feeling that Google and Apple know this. Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass are basically "Hey, we know microtransactions are shitty, so how about you pay us a monthly subscription so you don't have to deal with the microtransaction BS we've been encouraging our devs to use for years now."

[Kal-El814]

5 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I often wonder if this shit is perpetually sustainable. The things that make Apple and Roblox so much money is based on practices that are exploitative by design. You kind of get the feeling that Google and Apple know this. Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass are basically "Hey, we know microtransactions are shitty, so how about you pay us a monthly subscription so you don't have to deal with the microtransaction BS we've been encouraging our devs to use for years now."

 

It’s a good question and I really don’t know.

 

Gaming is weird. Next gen games on consoles are $70 which is still less than i paid for Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES or N64 launch games. I’d have thought that pricing model wouldn’t be sustainable for as long as it’s been, but here we are. Yeah Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft also sell subscription services now but you can still get tentpole single player games without engaging in those. Mobile / “small” gaming seems more likely to grow as people get more and more used to the notion that their kids will have a screen in front of them at younger and younger ages.

 

Who can say?

[TwinIon]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

I often wonder if this shit is perpetually sustainable. The things that make Apple and Roblox so much money is based on practices that are exploitative by design. You kind of get the feeling that Google and Apple know this. Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass are basically "Hey, we know microtransactions are shitty, so how about you pay us a monthly subscription so you don't have to deal with the microtransaction BS we've been encouraging our devs to use for years now."

I'm not even sure if sustainability is even the right thing to focus on. As @Kal-El814 brings up, the existing model for AAA games didn't seem sustainable, but here we are still paying similar prices to what we did 25 years ago. I remember when the prediction was that AAA budgets were such that everything would need to become an MMO with a monthly fee just to justify costs.

 

I think the micro transaction model as we see it today has proven itself profitable enough that it will survive, but it'll continue to evolve and co-exist with other models.

[Ghost_MH]

2 hours ago, TwinIon said:

I'm not even sure if sustainability is even the right thing to focus on. As @Kal-El814 brings up, the existing model for AAA games didn't seem sustainable, but here we are still paying similar prices to what we did 25 years ago. I remember when the prediction was that AAA budgets were such that everything would need to become an MMO with a monthly fee just to justify costs.

 

I think the micro transaction model as we see it today has proven itself profitable enough that it will survive, but it'll continue to evolve and co-exist with other models.

 

The big budget game model would be dead right now if it weren't for the drastic expansion of the player base. Thinking back to when games were way more expensive, the SNES and Genesis combined for fewer than 80m units in their entire lifetime. The Xbox One beats either of those consoles and the PS4 or Switch outsold both consoles, combined, and all hree did their own thing and were successful at the same time. The market is multiple times larger today than it's ever been, even before taking mobile gaming into account. That's the only reason games have been able to maintain their price in spite of inflation.

 

I'm not too worried about the state of games today. The major companies are all publicly traded and they're still making money with current sales figures and current game budgets. The smaller devs trying to play catch-up with the big guys and killing themselves in the process is a slowly dying practice. The public, in general, seems more than willing to buy smaller games with a more limited scope than they previously were.

 

A sizable chunk of mobile games are funded by whales with more money than sense. I'm sure a lot of these people are rich kids with a parent's card that allows them to drop $100k on whatever the most popular gatcha game these days is. However, the unsustainable part has to be whoever is spending $10k they don't have every year on keeping Candy Crush in the top ten grossing games every year since it's release.