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Comment by netcraft | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone speak to how good the arcade is? My children play tons of different games on the ipad/iphone and most of them are junk, pay to win and still tons of ads. But im just not a sure about a subscription for games im not sure is going to keep their interest over time.

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IMO it's shockingly good. Because there's no ads or IAP, the games optimize for fun or story, and not addictiveness. It has a large and varied catalog, but a high quality bar. I have never tried an Apple Arcade game and thought it was junk. Instead I've found some real gems: Assemble with Care, Card of Darkness, others

Did they end up adding anything that would be interesting for a "gamer"? I checked the launch lineup and they were mostly casual stuff.

Anything more complex now?

Yeah, it's casual, more for the Nintendo Switch crowd than Xbox. If you're into AAA games, then Apple Arcade doesn't have much to offer.

Oh it's worse. I'm an old PC gamer. Even the current AAA titles feel dumbed down :)

As sibling says, try it for a month and see. But I used it extensively when I was in the hospital earlier this year, and all of annoyances of mobile gaming (IAP, ads, and abstracted gambling) go away. There are some good games on there, too. Sasquatch is cute, Mini Motorways is mindless fun, and quite a few others (I'd have to look for specific names) that kept me entertained during the down time.

Highly recommend if your concern is ads and pay to win. It's like when Netflix first started streaming -- content is all over the place but at least there aren't any ads. Definitely enough gems in the collection.

I’ve had it pretty much since it launched. $5 a month is a pittance and there are quite a few excellent games on it (Grindstone is fantastic if you have any interest at all in color-matching puzzles), plus it’s hard to overstate the significance of the complete lack of ads and IAP. The fact that every single Arcade game works on our Apple TV is a real bonus because I can feel comfortable letting my son play games on it (especially since the vast majority are all-ages appropriate).

None of that garbage and pretty good quality. Why not try for a month or two?

I only keep it because of my kids. Gives me piece of mind on the games they are playing, since there is a lot of ad enabled trash everywhere. There are tons of good quality games included. I’ve thought about dropping it but I will definitely be doing the Apple One premier account or whatever that way we all get Apple Music, arcade and more iCloud space, Apple news + doesn’t hurt either.

Not something I'm going to pay for, but it's a nice add-on to what seems like a decent bundle over-all.

Arcade comes with 1 month free trial, so just give it a try and see if it works for you.

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