‘Monument Valley 3’ Will Be a Netflix Game – Perhaps a Dead Canary in the Apple Arcade Coal Mine

Jason Snell:

Netflix has been slowly rolling out a big catalog of games, tied to a Netflix login. There are loads out now, including the excellent Lucky Luna and Laya’s Horizon (both from Snowman, developer of the excellent Alto’s series of iOS games).

Maybe, a year (or years) from now, there will be a GamesIndustry story like this one about Apple Arcade, about Netflix: “Mobile Developers Describe Working With Apple Arcade as a ‘Very Difficult and Long Process’”.

But in the meantime, I think Netflix is doing what Apple claimed they were doing with Apple Arcade — except Netflix didn’t lose focus five minutes into the initiative. I know for a fact, knowing them personally, that there are game developers who are repulsed by casino-style pay-to-win monetization, who are basically desperate for a monetization path that is up-front and completely healthy to all players. And they realize that such paths go through mainstream subscription services.

Apple Arcade, on the surface, sounds like exactly what they’re asking for. And it would give Apple device exclusivity. But Apple has botched this. It’s hard to believe, but they have. The general gist among game developers is that Apple is a hard-driving partner with whom, most likely, you’ll break even at best. The hard-driving part is to be expected. That’s Apple. It would be really weird and alarming if they weren’t demanding. But the “break even at best” part is not.

★ Wednesday, 21 August 2024