Apple is running out of chances to get gaming right (Macworld/Dan Moren)
Apple has made several attempts to make a go of the game market over the years—anyone remember when Apple had Game Evangelists? Pippin? Game Sprockets? And each and every time, just like boss battles in classic Nintendo games, those efforts have largely been futile. Gaming has so often seemed like an afterthought for Apple, paid lip service while the company focused on other areas that it clearly felt more passionately about, like music.
With iOS, it seemed as though Apple had finally struck gold, providing a platform for hundreds of games that millions of people obsess over. But while the company’s mobile platform has proved to be profitable for gaming, there’s only so much of that success that can be laid directly at Apple’s own feet. After all, we’re talking about a company that initially eschewed the idea of even allowing third parties to build native apps for its smartphone.
The company’s latest foray into the gaming arena has been Apple Arcade, and while it started out promising, interest has largely died off until just a couple of weeks ago, when Apple made a change that might prove a shot in the arm for the company’s efforts—or could very well prove to be yet another instance of a stopped clock being right twice a day.
