If you thought the App Store was spammy and scammy before in-app purchases, it was nothing compared to apps distributed for free, that then conned, pressured, and manipulated customers into spending way more on add-ons.
Within a short period of time, the App Store model had found its way to Android, along with the same in-app purchase experience. Although increasingly unpleasant for consumers, this was clearly not just a chump-change business opportunity for app vendors.
At $4.99 per month for a family, [Apple Arcade is a great deal]. For less than $60 a year, an entire family can play a wide selection of games at will, with no additional fees, no interruptions, no upsells, and no buyer fatigue… From a consumer perspective, these new subscription programs represent a higher level of curation and reduced hassle, all for the annual cost of one triple-A console game. Subscribers are, by the very nature of the service, protected from constant upsells…
As we come to see how well consumers adopt these programs, we’ll have a much better insight into what may be possible into the future.
MacDailyNews Take: The $4.99/month is a no-brainer for anyone who’s tired of being pestered to make in-app purchases to continue playing a game they like – and that’s basically everyone!
This doesn’t ring true.
Games that leverage in-app purchases will simply not be available in the Arcade model. That doesn’t mean relief / freedom from IAP, it means a filter that excludes those games.
I can do that with the app-store now.
Apple Arcade should have been included free for being part of the ecosystem. This should not be a pay feature and, at $4.99 a month why bother? Apple overcharges for most everything. I utterly despise the subscription model and it was designed just to screw people miserably. Everywhere you look there is a subscription for something. Take Apple again with it’s pissy old 5GB of storage and then right to .99 cents for 50GB? Really????? Come on…. Apple should be providing at least 50GB for being part of the ecosystem and I’d say more like 200GB yet for that they charge $2.99 per month.. Very sad.