This year can be said to be the year when Apple Arcade fully shines. Because they have not only made great efforts to build this platform that features no ads and no in-app purchases, but also introduced many popular works that have added this feature to make them more attractive, such as:Asphalt》、《monster hunter” and “NBA2K” game works, and did not forget to upgrade the specifications of original game works to the level of large game consoles. At the beginning of the year, we saw the Apple Arcade masterpiece “Fantasian“, and now we have seen an unexpected “IP” battle work – the battle action game “Disney Melee Mania” that brings together Disney and Pixar animated characters.
With Apple’s wave of mobile device updates, we also found the opportunity to interview the development teams of many well-known mobile device games to talk about what these experts think of the “Apple game ecosystem” that is gradually taking shape as the 120Hz ProMotion high refresh rate screen is launched on the iPhone 13 Pro and the iPad mini 6, the most powerful Apple game console, is in place in the tablet product line. Finally, of course, there are previews of more games in this wave of Apple Arcade – “LEGO Star Wars: Castaways”, which combines LEGO and Star Wars, is also worth looking forward to!
▲Image source: Disney
The trailer for “Disney Melee Mania”, a huge battle between Disney and Pixar characters, will be released next month. There are many new Apple Arcade games to watch in this article! (Developer interview)
As the iPhone 13 Pro series begins to be equipped with the iPad Pro’s specialty ProMotion high refresh rate screen, Apple’s most powerful gaming machine iPad mini 6 and the iPad (9th generation) with sufficient performance and ultra-high cost performance are officially launched. We see that Apple seems to be shouting the slogan “It’s great to buy our devices and play games!” Following the release of a series of hardware, the game has been launched to provide consumers with a more powerful Apple Arcade lineup.
▲Image source: 2K
Not to mention anything else, the first online social action-adventure game “LEGO Star Wars: Castaways”, which will be released this Friday, combining the themes of Lego and the classic movie Star Wars series, and “NBA2K22 Arcade Edition” which effectively utilizes the rapid update feature of the mobile system to evolve with the progress of the season, already has extremely high appeal.
▲Image source: Disney
However, when the trailer for “Disney Melee Mania” came out, people really didn’t expect that Elsa from “Frozen” could actually have a battle with Mickey, Destruction King and even Buzz Lightyear in a virtual arena. You can really see it in this game created by Mighty Bear Games, where Disney and Pixar IPs come together.
The game provides two game modes: Spotlight Dash limited-time capture the flag and Team Rumble battle to capture points. And you can control many fantastic characters (“Timon” in The Lion King is fantastic enough XD) to play a 3v3 team or single-on-one brawl type game. The previews of these new games really make people look forward to it, and they may even want to get an iPad mini first to play these games. With one Apple Arcade subscription, you can play more than 200 games including “Bigfoot”, “Mini Motorways”, “The Oregon Trail” and more.
Interviews with developers on the next generation of Apple gaming experiences
With the new generation of Apple hardware in place, the game lineup, headed by the highly anticipated “Disney Melee Mania”, seems to be driving a new wave of Apple gaming experiences. In this regard, the Computer King Ada team also found an opportunity to interview members of several very representative game development companies.
▲Picture source: MiHoYo
As for the performance aspect, the MiHoYo team that created the current high performance benchmark for mobile games and also won the App Store iPhone Game of the Year Award for the “Genshin Impact” game believes that the reason why it can provide game quality performance comparable to console quality on Apple devices – and even enable the 120Hz high refresh rate option on devices that support ProMotion, is mainly due to Apple’s powerful CPU and GPU computing power, coupled with a good Metal API, which can quickly add new hardware support to the game.
▲Image source: 2K
Mike Escudero, director of partnerships for the “NBA2K” development team, also echoed this view in a follow-up interview. In addition to saying that after playing NBA2K with a 120Hz refresh rate and feeling a more realistic and more immersive excitement, it is really difficult to go back. He also mentioned that with the development tools provided by Apple, they have been able to continuously break through the gaming limits of mobile phones and tablets in the three years since they launched a series of games on mobile platforms. And new features can be quickly provided to players from the prototype stage.
This time, support for the iPad mini’s Liquid Retina screen took just one day to complete, providing the best gaming experience.
▲Image source: Disney
The subject of the interview came to Mighty Bear, the Singaporean developer responsible for creating “Disney Melee Mania”. At the beginning of the interview, it was emphasized that the company culture attaches great importance to the racial diversity of employees, and they have a vision of making it easy for players to get started and enjoy the game.
It continues the joyful atmosphere of the Apple Arcade game “Butter Royale”, which uses food as weapons to fight, and combines the “diversity” of unexpected casting with the combat skill elements of “three moves to defeat the world” without learning costs. For the upcoming “Disney Melee Mania” brawling game. In addition to the charm of the character itself, it also provides unique game elements.
▲Image source: Disney
Abel from Mighty Bear revealed in an interview that this product, which can span iOS / iPadOS / tvOS and even macOS, can not only provide ProMotion 120Hz display support, but also provide the first time gaming experience with joystick handles and keyboard and mouse. After the 12 characters appearing in the first wave were announced, additional characters will be added from time to time. It is emphasized that the number of characters from Pixar and Disney will be balanced, and the diverse demands will include unexpected characters that have almost never been seen in games before.
Limited-time activities will also be provided, so that everyone can collect not only the path path totems, clothing and other elements in the game, but also emoticons, which can also be collected after participating in the event (the first wave is Timon, the name of the event should be familiar to everyone, it is called “Hakuna matata」XD）。
More new Apple Arcade titles are coming soon
▲Image source: RED GAMES
In addition to new original and popular game titles, Apple Arcade also recently released the 2018 Apple Design Award-winning action game “audemars》Join the lineup. Combining the nostalgic scrolling game style with superb level design and original music, all game levels can be unlocked without additional payment because of being on Apple Arcade.
In addition, the classic tower defense and shooting game “kingdom defense” and BANDAI NAMCO’s “Galaxy Soldier Bee》 are also confirmed to join Apple Arcade. A card game that allows you to use various well-known Transformers characters such as Cobow and BumblebeeTransformers Tactical Arena》It has also been officially put on the shelves recently. These are all works worth trying for friends who subscribe to Apple Arcade.
Conclusion: Apple’s gaming ecosystem is gradually taking shape and complements each other.
In fact, the chips installed from Apple alone often exceed the “fastest” performance of competitors of the same level by 30% or even as much as 50% every year – not to mention that the iPad Pro is now equipped with desktop-level M1 processing performance. Although it talks about the performance of using Apple devices to play games, in fact, there are no hardware bottlenecks for a long time.
But how to attract consumers not just for work, but also to use iPad or even Mac products as game consoles for leisure and relaxation. The question of how to attract more game developers that support Apple devices to join is, I guess, the biggest reason for the birth of Apple Arcade.
After all, under the premise that it can be played across all Apple devices and even Mac, as long as a game platform can be developed that can not only have 3A-level masterpieces, but also accommodate a rich collection of sketch games. I believe that as long as consumers can start to change their minds and think “Want to buy Apple devices to play games”, in fact, the game ecosystem created by Apple Arcade or the entire App Store over the years should be considered a staged success.
As for when or how such a goal can be achieved? If you have really been thinking about buying an iPad mini 6 recently to try out the performance of Apple’s so-called most powerful gaming machine, then at least they are on the right track.
Further reading:
iPhone 13 Pro photography long-term test experience: “Movie-level” is just the beginning
Source: KOCPC Chinese