Apple Arcade will Spend 500 Million on Games, Possibly Securing Exclusives

A couple of weeks ago, not long after Google announced that they had decided to enter the arena of the games industry with the streaming-centric Stadia, Apple announced that it, too, had decided to double down on video games, although in a very different way from Google. While Google would be focusing on promoting high-quality game streaming across a variety of platforms, Apple would be launching the aptly named Apple Arcade. Rather than trying to buy into the triple-A gaming world, the Apple Arcade is more a premium platform to showcase the best mobile games the company has on offer – putting them all in one spot for easy access and better visibility.

And apparently, they’re going in hard on this, because it was just revealed by the Financial Times they’re investing about half a billion USD into this new project: small potatoes to a company like Apple, but impressive all the same.

This money is mostly to purchase timed exclusives from developers, and it seems their goal is to pull the same trick the Epic Game Store has been pulling in PC gaming by using sheer financial clout to ensure their platform has exclusive rights to some of the hottest games, at least for a time.

As for what games those could be, well, that’s anyone’s guess. Shantae 5 was announced for Apple Arcade, but it was also announced for other gaming consoles as well. If it is a timed exclusive, it certainly didn’t suggest as much when initially revealed. As for anything else, well, we’re still sort of in the dark about that, as neither Konami, Platinum Games, Mistwalker, Sega, or the other studios that agreed to release games on the platform have revealed what games those will actually be. Heck, we don’t even know how much the arcade will cost.

But still, good to know those games will have a lot of money behind them.