Apple Arcade is already straying from its original promise

The day of this writing marks the six-month anniversary of Apple Arcade, and Apple’s subscription-based gaming service has every reason to be booming. It’s got over 100 games, it costs only $4.99 a month, and Apple is offering this package at a time when much of the world is sequestered indoors and saving money out of fears of a financial crisis.

And yet Apple barely mentions the service in public anymore. New releases of Apple Arcade games rarely make ripples on social media. It’s still too early to say “Game Over” for Apple Arcade, but this is as good of a time as any to wonder what went wrong and figure out how Apple could improve the situation.

There is some hope for Apple Arcade, partly because there has been a noticeable change in its direction. The situation was a little more dire just a month ago, as ahead of the half-year mark you could already find some outlets proclaiming, which essentially gave Apple Arcade its own version of . Two weeks later, it followed up with , a fantasy dungeon crawler that draws liberally from . Notably, both of these games “feel” more like traditional mobile games than the bulk of what came before them in Apple Arcade, which may signal a shift in strategy from the folks in Cupertino. I can’t say I’m exactly happy with it, but at this point I’m ready to admit it might be the smart way to go.