Apple Arcade - Is It Worth It in 2024? (Sonic Dream Team, Puyo Puyo & More) 

and yet again, jon is legally required to mention puyo puyo in every video

We missed you Jon! Congratulations to you and Roxy :).

I agree with Jon on game subscription services. It's no real use to just have them burning a hole in your wallet when you have nothing you want to play on them. It's better to only subscribe when there's something you want to play on it, and unsubscribe later. Of course, since I pay for Gamepass yearly (I found a way to do that and pay a bit less than I'd pay on a month by month basis) I can't really do that, but I definitely salute those who do.

19:49 that title change was probably all it to took to trick Apple into thinking they were getting an exclusive, lol

Amitie in thumbnail; it's a Jon video. ALSO CONGRATS !!

Ah apple arcade, where awesome ideas get developed but never completely finished. Except fantasian

No mention of Hello Kitty Island Adventure! It's basically Animal Crossing but with Sanrio characters and it looks like So much fun and it's so cute, and i want to play it so badly, but i want it on Switch or PC not an Apple device

I agree with this, but I think Jon really undersold the achievements of the story mode in Puyo Puzzle Pop, probably on account of him not having been prepared for the game being episodic (which was only really announced in Japanese so, yeah...). What we had at the time this game announced was really only the first act of the story, so it makes sense it's exposition-heavy. Judged by how many updates have been announced, this is most likely going to be the longest story mode the franchise has ever had, so uh. A lot is going to happen.

Dream Team is quite possibly the best 3D Sonic game since Generations. If they can make more stages and bring the game on modern console or PC, than it would be even more spectacular and it would top Generations for me.

A lot of people hated Apple Arcade for good reasons, but that doesn't mean it's incompetent. I would pay for the service over using any android based app store, but both optional would require holding me at gun point. The subscription service itself protects players from the cesspool of microtransactions that is the modern mobile market. No poorly design and managed Gachas, no idle/merging cashgrabs, no shovelware. The fact that the canceled Castlevaina game released here way later with all of the bs removed should tell you that this place is truely safe. The games themselves are at the very least of a certain quality because unlike the actual i-phone, Apple didn't cut corners when it comes to budget. Of course there's sonic, but from what I've heard from twitter, the Puyopuyo game was well received, the story and lore had some sauce. It's a matter of perspective, gems won't shine if there're not enough trash. At the end, I respect Jon stick to his judgment and not creating a double standard by giving gamepass a pass, so to speak.

[Me, waiting for the obligatory Puyo reference] "SAY THE LINE, JON!"

So sad Chu Chu Rocket Universe on Apple Arcade got delisted a couple years ago.

I was really hoping Fantasian would lead to lots of turn based RPGs, but sadly it hasn't as far as I can tell. I feel like the phone, iPad and Apple TV are all really great places to play JRPGs but it just doesn't happen. I feel like if Apple turned to Square and was like, "Hey we'll give you money if we can bundle all your FF games that you already have for mobile on here!" Square would be nuts to say no, but I 'm guessing they have said no. There have been a few great games I found on Apple Arcade, Grindstone, Mini Motor Ways. Ironically my parents both use Apple Arcade more than I do. My mom plays a game called Simon's Story almost exclusively and my Dad plays these Clash of Clans Apple Arcade games. There's also games like Monument Valley on here, a version of classic Angry Birds that isn't trying to reach into your wallet all the time. My frustration comes with the fact that Apple Arcade really does feel like everything on there is mobile first for obvious reasons, but Puzzle games and RPGs are really the only games that are fun to play with a touch screen. There was a Shante game I downloaded for Apple Arcade and I remember it didn't play good. The Sonic racing game takes forever to load. It's kind of weird, like associate Apple with quality, my iPhone works fantastically, so does my Mac, my Apple TV, my AirPods, iPad and Apple Pencil, Apple Watch all of them generally work amazingly well and do what you want. The rub coes in with Apple's services which range from amazing "how did you do this" to "oh... so you'd like my money?" Apple runs Apple Music, and iTunes. iTunes used to control basically the entire music industry because it was so much better than buying CDs, even if people did tend to buy whole albums still. Apple kind of tricked the record industry into not horribly taking advantage of people. But the record industry though banished and sealed away for a thousand years eventually was released when part of their souls were reincarnated at Spotify! And so now you have this company that's "Totally not just the big record labels and Tencent in a trench coat" which figured out they could just get people to stop paying for music and instead listen to ads and not really pay artists... but also never 'make money' at least on paper. Anyway, Apple runs the #2 music service in the world, but Spotify also at least officially I think has still never 'made money' and is probably designed to never make money. Near as I can tell it's just a scam. But because of Apple's long standing stuff with the music industry basically any song worth listening to is probably on Apple Music and if you pay for the service it just works. Ironically while probably their single biggest service in terms of revenue (I think) it has no exclusive content. Then you've got Apple TV+ AKA everyone used to say, "Can HBO become Netflix before Netflix becomes HBO?" Turns out both were just gonna become Discovery Channel, and now Apple is HBO. I have no idea if Apple TV+ is making money because their whole strategy seems to be DUMP MONEY INTO FAMOUS PEOPLE'S MOUTHHOLES! But it's made some really good TV. (I think now it's the undisputed champ in terms of % of content that critics and views love vs filler crap.) You've got iCloud and it's associated services that just work amazing and they're so transparent people might not even realize they're services, things like iMessage and Facetime, iCloud storage and iCloud Drive, the Find My network, none of these involve third parties they're all just deisnged by Apple in house and they're generally rock solid and amazing. The App Store started out as this really cool store where devs could put up Apps that cost between a dollar and hundreds of dollars, Apple took a 30% cut (down to 15 now unless you're an uber rich company that is just selling in game skins which are pure profit for you anyway.) Then eventually Apple released in app purchases... which I think they saw as a way to allow basic and premium thigns in the same app bundle... but developers were like, "Ah, forget quality this is all about manipulating the user!" Sigh, Capitalism is why we can't have nice apps. Apple tried to fix this with subscriptions but just kinda made it worse. (Hindsight being twenty twenty, they really should have just created a trial system where the dev could decide how long they wanted to let you actively be in the app before the trial ran out, you could try out all the features and then the phone would prompt you to pay in order to continue using it.) Ultimately Apple's attempt to ensure a good customer experience on the App Store kind of ended up backfiring. Lots of devs released ad supported free versions of their apps, which quickly conditioned everyone to ONLY want free apps (it didn't help that so may paid apps ended up being clunky and not working properly.) Games on iPhone ran into all these problems where early on there were some really innovative games and ones that tried really hard. But it quickly became clear that the easiest way to make money on Apple's system was created a system where you could get word of mouth by lots of people downloading your free games, and then you create a few addicts and bleed them dry. In theory Apple Arcade tries to solve this system by just charging a flat rate. But the quality of the games varies so wildly. Initially they were all going to be unique concepts. But then Apple seems to have figured out it was a much better idea to just bring in a lot of games that had previously done greate in earlier versions of the App Store but then didn't transition to the "VACUUM ALL THE MONEY" way of doing things. The weird part is that the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV all have insanely powerful chips in them. I'm 90% sure that with a little bit of elbow grease you could easily port the entire Switch Library to that Apple TV. Like, they're REALLY powerful. I honestly don't understand why particularly for the Apple TV and Mac Apple hasn't just approached Switch devs and said, "Hey we've partnered with these porting studios, we will give you money, we will port the game, just give us the game!" Add to that that Steam for Mac is such a weird system that if anything feels designed to gaslight Mac users into thinking there's no games on the platform, rather than just being like, "Hey, I can see you're on a Mac, how about I only show you games available for Mac when you're browsing, and if you search for Windows only games I'll show them to you but make clear this won't play on your computer?" As far as I'm concerned Steam is so bad that Apple should actively be approaching ever Mac compatible game maker and saying, "Hey, how about you come over to the App Store and put your game somewhere where people who are looking for new Mac software will find it? Also how about we put it on Apple TV for you so you get new customers with minimal effort?" Really it just boils down to the classic argument of "Apple doesn't get gaming" which is frustrating since the iPhone accidentally became the single most popular device that people play games on. (Often tiems because it's the device you have with you at work when things get slow and you're bored or when you're on the bus or whatever.) I'm not sure why Apple doesn't have a single exec who has ever shown true public passion for gaming the way that Microsoft and other companies do. I feel like they've got Apple Arcade reporting to the same people who handle other media stuff for Apple, and I think those people care way more about getting sports ball rights than they do about gaming. But yeah, Apple Arcade has some really great stuff on there, but it really feels like Apple has just been handing over money but not really co-developing with the devs so lots of things feel far more inconsistent.

They made Tetris Effect Bomberman?

I understand the animosity behind Apple Arcade, but people need to realize that these games wouldn’t be made at all without Apple’s direction and funding. I know that it’s frustrating that some of the games are exclusive, and I’d argue that they all should be on other platforms - however, it’s important to recognize that this initiative made these games possible in the first place.

*Port-begging for console games to come to other consoles/PC:* Bad *Port-begging for mobile games to come to consoles/PC:* Good

Apple reminds me a lot about Disney when it concerns the gaming industry: both are extremely successful and profitable companies led by executives completely unaware of their potential and connections within the gaming atmosphere.

Jon: as a hungry gamer i have 2 choices, eat the controller or stick with factor Me: why not both?

That statement at the end was beautiful and is a sentiment I’ve held since day 1 of Game Pass, thank you Jon:)

There’s also wylde flowers, a very good cozy witch game and hello kitty tropical island or w/e which is a really cute town builder island adventure

Congrats on the wedding!

Another banger John video, had no idea there was a THIRD version of the new Samba de Amigo game!

I'm with you on subscription services for single player games. I think they can be beneficial for multiplayer though if you and several friends are on the same service. For a while me and a few friends played quite a bit of multiplayer stuff through Game Pass and it was nice to know that the whole group had access to the same library. That said these days we've been playing less so we just pick a free to play one to mess around on when the occasion pops up. I think these kinds of services can be good for shorter retro games too. NSO isn't half bad IMO for that.

Wait I didn't realise it was so cheap to grab an apple TV. I playing Sonic Dream team on my mums old screen-shattered iPhone 7 with 0.5 seconds of input lag...

11:14 If I had to guess, the lack of local multiplayer is to take into account players on iPhone since there’s not really a good way to do local multiplayer for this with touch controls. Unless you consider local wireless, same-screen multiplayer just wouldn’t work on mobile.

Outside from Sonic Dream Team of Pocket Card Jockey, i was not aware that Apple Arcade had a lot more name brand stuff like Bomberman, Puyo Puyo and the original Mistwaker game.

I do recommend playing the Ironhide games on Apple Arcade! Don’t sleep on those. Kingdom Rush Frontiers, Iron Marines, Legends of Kingdom Rush, Junkworld are all very much worth your time. To me Ironhide is the best developer of mobile games in the world. Not sure how these games play with a controller, though. And most games are also available on Steam.

I think its really good that you took the Apple TV route. A lot of gamers think you need an iPhone, iPad or Mac to play these. The Apple TV is, even new, very cheap when compared to a console. Especially so when compared to phones, tablets and PCs. And like you did, you can get them used too. The one thing I wanna make sure you think about if you wanna buy a used Apple TV is to look at what A-series chip is in it. Not all Apple TV's are the same! Newer ones are more powerful than older ones and some of the older ones wont play all these console-like games very well on your TV. Also the Apple TV will output games in 4K on a 4K TV so maybe change the display resolution in tvOS settings to save on performance.

I think it's important to mention that a lot of the titles wouldn't exist without Apple. It's understandable people wouldn't want yet another device or pay wall to deal with. But that argument could be applied to any platform. If I can toss another recommendation for Jon I'd say try Guildlings, a fun little rpg.

Mate what a fantastic review ive always wondered what apple games is and why people get it. I can safely say, now i understand there is some nice games on there

Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage, and Persona 3 and 5 Dancing are also set in dream worlds, so I think SEGA just likes using it as an easy story setup lol

I don't have a single Apple Device but I like Apple Arcade because I've seen multiple games come from AA and then release on Switch. Shinsekai Into the Depths is a game that I really love and that came from AA.I don't think a lot of these games would exist without something like AA funding them

Totally worth it - my twins love it and are continuously enjoying in-app purchase- and commercial free games of high quality on their iPads.

Another banger from Jon!

I think subscriptions are great for retro and arcade games that were made to be played for small sessions. I'd love to see NEO GEO games on a sub just to swap between them on the fly like you would in an arcade. As for big console games I agree that the value doesn't really make sense.

no hello kitty island adventure

Have enjoyed being able to play these games on my Mac I like the option for the kids to have non ad games

14:20 is the studio Ex-square

Being a huge "Final Fantasy was best when Sakaguchi was at Square" fanboy, I've always wanted to try out Fantasian, so I really do hope it comes to other platforms... And I totally agree with your view on subscriptions. I've never been very fond of subscriptions simply because I don't like the urge of "I have to get my money's worth" since I feel that I could have simply used the money to buy a game I wanted when I didn't make good use of the subscription for a month or two.

I really love Apple Arcade since I have it in my Apple one subscription I share with my family but it would not be something i would buy by itself. Having the option to play some of these games just randomly with the backbone is great. Apple Arcade is great in a bundle but by itself not so much

Jon making another awesome video.

I would say Apple Arcade is great if you have a way to either play it on a TV or with physical buttons. There are a ton of other games on Netflix too, and with emulators now available I feel like I can carry a lighter bag lol

please cover some more arcade games, like grindstone and syanara wild hearts. also i feel you undersold rayman mini. its more specal to me personally as the game that got me to get arcade and get back into the rayman series.

Isn't there one from Platinum games, fighting yokai in brush stroke aesthetics

Please note: if you guys want to play Sonic Dream Team on Apple TV, I highly recommend getting any generation of Apple TV 4K instead of the 5th or 4th Gen Apple TV HD, because the characters will look more pixelated due to the Apple TV HD boxes not being more powerful than their 4K counterparts (and the fact that the Apple TV HD only has 32 GB of storage compared to either 32 or 64 GB on the 4K models)

Apple TV 4K after first version is a significant improvement for Apple Arcade too

i played so much finity on apple arcade that i experienced the tetris effect

Phantom R making an appearance again………….that song is a banger

As a dedicated Apple user that has had to wrestle with Wine and game developers that won't make games optimized for Mac, let alone compatible, it's nice that we have big name games for Mac.

I know it got delisted... But the lack of World of Demons by PlatinumGames in this video, brings me great pain... BTW AMAZING JOB JON! Thank you for this video!

Once Fantasian is released on Steam I'm immediately losding it on my Steam Deck.

Hey everyone, Jon here!

I think subscriptions for games can work for people's value. For example 10 hour games can cost just as much as a 70 hour game. So if people like the 10 hour games on subscriptions, they can pull off getting their value. Longer games are harder for sure to get what's worth. But if you buy a game and 30 hours in you hate it, you lose money. And if you trade and sell it, odds are you're replacing it with another game losing more money. Just need to know ahead of what you're getting into and calculate.

I have the same thoughts on Game Pass, I don't have the time so I like to buy the games I want

I bought a month of Apple Arcade this month since I got a new iPad for my birthday and I genuinely think it’s solid. Not worth it as a subscription personally but if you have an Apple product and you’re a gamer a month or 2 is all you’ll probably need.

And sadly I was never able to play World of Demons🤧(from Platinum Games)

and, yes it is impressive what Hardlight can make when they have more than one year to work on a Sonic game

yeah for the most part Game subscription services are just a value for people who likes to try out games constantly ... either way i hope someone figures out an Apple arcade Emulator that can fully salvage the games into a playable Offline form

I agree with the hot take. I keep buying all my games instead of using game pass so I don’t really get my moneys worth from it. I think I’ll let it finally lapse and just get a month when there’s a game I want on there

I wish all these games get ports to other consoles where more people can play them, so the people that work on these work won't go to waste and people would know about them, because beside sonic all the other games in the video I didn't know about them

There are so many more awesome games on there.

Apple Arcade has had better game releases than most consoles this year to be honest... Dream Team has had an update with a new world added by the way 👌

I wish Rayman Mini were just a tad more fleshed out bc I already like it basically as much as Legends. Love the theming and I think the level design is super strong. I love the Run games as well but Mini is clearly the strongest of the mobile Rayman games and if that’s the only way they’re willing to put out 2D Rayman anymore, I will still happily take it.

Seen a tweet saying you were gonna make this, time to find out if that month of free Apple Arcade is finally getting redeemed 😅

Fantasian game looks good 😮

You can just play them on an AppleTV. Nice little gaming console.

i dont have time for factor imma eat my controller instead

I mainly got Apple Arcade cause of taiko no tatsujin pop tap beat, ended up canceling when rhythm festival came out on switch since I felt like I was just paying to play an inferior version of a game I enjoy lol

I wish these games were real

23:31 sometimes I forget Nintendo doesn’t own Game Freak

Is so sad that puyo puyo puzzle pop is trapped in apple arcade

Considering they killed a bunch of games that aren't bring released on other platforms. I hate it.

Do videos for Netflix, Crunchyroll, or any other services which offer games.

Apple: We will destroy consoles Next Time!

18:18 wait, WtF? Even though the Switch version was payed!?

Apple Arcade, aka it's here now but it'll come to other platforms eventually

No Hello Kitty Island Adventure 0/10 video

SEGA In 2001: Oh It would be better to go third party than having everything on our console SEGA In 2024: Hey Apple, you wanna sell those products?

18:03 why is it the worst one?

Wylde Flowers is absolutely amazing fyi

I'd love to play the new Puyo Puyo game, it's been almost 4 years since the last game after all, but I've had numerous bad experiences with Apple products, so I flat out refuse to buy their garbage hardware, and seeing so many games that look genuinely interesting be locked behind not only Apple's garbage OS, but a subscription service where you can't own the games just pisses me off

I'm seeing a pattern here... releasing games with a significant multiplayer component, and making them exclusive to a platform that barely anyone can even afford to begin with, is a recipe for dead servers, and no wonder why most of those games are padding the tumbleweeds with CPUs. It's the kind of choice only a shareholder would decide to take.

good thing I know how to get them free...

Not until it comes out on anything other than an apple device it isn't!

Apple Arcade these days… wow!

I hate it when devs big or small force themselves to go Apple arcade only.

Chu Chu Rocket Universe is forever dead...

they could’ve easily just made these all paid instead of apple arcade games

It’s been a wasted opportunity. There’s been a handful of good games on there but most are just your standard mobile but with all the “micro transactions “ took out. It was a perfect way to utilise the AppleTV as a little gaming machine and it could have been the start of Apple maybe taking gaming more seriously but sadly it never happened

Yes. Why? Biggest angry birds game ever on there, 20+ chapters

It might be if y’all didn’t keep complaining every time a game from a series you like came out on it lol

Sonic the hedgehog 😊😊😊😊😊

Thanks Jon, you reminded me to cancel my apple arcade subscription.

Land of the bots

Am I the only one who thinks Fantasian looks...not that good at all? Yeah the dioramas are cool, but everything else about the presentation is generic and kinda subpar. The character models aren't great and they haven't done anything to mesh them with the photography. It's blurry photos and impossibly sharp character models. Looks good through a compressed Twitter video but not so much when you look at it in HD.

I think complaining about some of these games being exclusive to Apple platforms is about as silly as complaining about any console exclusive. Companies pay to make these things exclusive, it’s a bit like yelling at clouds. I think the business model is questionable though. I’m clearly a bigger Apple fan than Jon, and I am quite skeptical that Arcade is going to stick around, which could mean all these games just disappear. Stadia’s gone (shocker), and Apple doesn’t have a great track record of committing to the gaming market and really investing in great support for it. Idk. I’d like to believe this will make a better gaming experience on Apple products, but I am not convinced so far. There just isn’t much to play when this single video can cover pretty much all of the good stuff

13:26 Huh? Why not? If there was a time to do this, it would have been in the 80s/90s when practical sets were more commonplace.

it's sad that you basically talked about every decent game on apple arcade and it has been these games for a long time beside the new sonic and puyo puyo. Apple should have studioS of their own making apple arcade games. without that it is hard to see a reason to pay a sub for it

Don't be fooled by Hard Light, Jon. They are one of the greediest moneysucks of a corporation I've ever seen. EVERY SINGLE GAME has microtransactions up the wazoo. From the Forces racing game doubling your cards per mission for 10 bucks a WEEK, to demanding $3 on sonic dash to see 80% less advertiments, to $20-30 to unlock a Legendary character instantly. They recycle their mobile assets over and over again and try to create fomo with unnecessary time limits on character unlocks. Hell, Sonic Prime Dash is literally just Sonic Dash AGAIN. Copy and pasted boss fights and all. That Sega had them at the helm of full games should be a red flag to everyone.

You look and sound like a gigachad