Quick Look: Apple Arcade

These YT thumbnails need more giant arrows and impact font text.

I really don't know about these thumbnails, but at least they're not detrimental to the video quality like the early experiments with motion graphics.

Tried to watch this live on mobile. The constant buffering sucks.

Video settings:

Auto

High

Low (which is actually is just HIGH)

These thumbnails have clearly [GONE SEXUAL]

I will never look at Sk8ter Boi the same again.

Sonic the Hedgehog rules

Jeff you've convinced me, I need that Superdry merch.

I used to play idle games, clickers, and any sort of decent mobile RPG all the time. What caused me to stop was stamina, energy, that would disallow me to play for long periods of time. The best games were the ones with no stamina bar because fucking, really? The most antithetical thing to a game is the inability to move forward and that's mobile games modus operandi.

I just got a Samsung Tab S6 and haven't even installed any games because mobile games are just disappointing and the worst of what video games is. If the android option ends up being as quality as this is I may need to look into it. I have an iPhone but not an iPad, as much as I prefer iPhones they just don't make the better tablet for someone like me who likes to play brutal doom and not be locked behind a thousand paywalls.

Grindstone for Game of the Year 2019

These games all look pretty bad.

Maybe it was just the selection. I'd like to see Gungeon and ChuChu Rocket for sure.

It's been a while since I was jealous of iOS users. Meanwhile, Google Play Pass is...

... Well, at least I can play through Sorcery.

Does anyone remember the game that was like Grindstone? Came out a few years ago...

Can we save the youtube thumbnails for just youtube? I hate to use the word cringe, but......

I don’t play a ton of games on my iPad, just one or two a year that I play occasionally, but now if the ones I like are Apple Arcade releases they’ve gone from pay once and own forever and check back in whenever I want to me having to pay a subscription fee every time I want to check back in

That'd be nice, but probably too much extra work, or they want consistency, and I'm sure the metrics say they need/should use them. Personally I just scroll past any Youtube video that uses this style so I kind of feel dirty clicking them here.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After trying this on the Apple TV I can feel safe in saying most of these games suck. Also the Apple TV selection is much smaller but they still advertise it as 100+ games. My partner and I counted maybe 50. Oceanhorn seemed cool but I'll just go buy Zelda.

The Google play pass seems like a better deal at this point. Much better selection of games from a bunch of different genres though most of them are older and google doesn't appear to be funding development of exclusive phone games like apple is doing.

The YT style thumbnails ain't it.

I like the bad youtube thumbnails.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who isn’t a fan of the YouTube thumbnail thing.

Is it weird that I reflexively cringed when Jeff said "its got a shop" for skate city.

Huh. Curious list if the listed games are what they showed (haven’t watched). There’s some big omissions like Card of Darkness. If you have an Apple device, Arcade is well worth the 5 bucks a month. There’s some absolute bangers on there. It’s not just “here’s some games you can get on the store anyway, and we tossed them in here.” There’s a real sense that Apple spent significant time filtering the list. Time will tell if they can keep this quality level up.

This youtube frame thing is weird as hell.

YouTube thumbnails are the worst. I hate them and it makes me want to visit this website less.

2 hour quick look lets fucking gooooo

Let's really lean into the YouTube thumbnail thing and get some hot young zoomers to dress up like Jeff, Ben and Brad to appear in the thumbnails.

The youtuber pandering experiments seem to just be a jan/west initiative. Videos from the east coast are still clean.

If you're going to try another game on this on UPF, definitely take a look at Bleak Sword. Surprisingly great action game published by Devolver.

Downvote for the thumbnail

I’m seeing a few comments criticizing the game selection, so let me just say that there are several awesome games on this service, and a few of them are probably some of my favorite games of the year, period.

• Tangle Tower

• Bleak Sword

• Exit the Gungeon

• ChuChu Rocket

• What the Golf

• Grindstone

• Mini Motorways

I got arcade. I installed CardOfDarkness. I got hooked! I have not tried anything else yet!

i like the thumbnail

The thumbnails are fine, yeesh. So dramatic.

@bill_mcneal: Dungeon Raid?

It's not a big deal and I don't like shitting on people's hard work, but the thumbnails are kind of off putting. Makes the site feel "cheaper" to me. Just an opinion of course, and not like it would stop me tuning in.

I think the thumbnails are fine on the site, but on YouTube it makes Giant Bomb look like any other gaming channel. When they use cartoon renditions of themselves in the thumbnail is when I'll be truly disappointed.

@hassun said:

Imagining a thumbnail with giant text reading "JEFF DID WHAT?!?!"

I still would be more inclined to pay 10 bucks for games like Grindstone than paying 5 bucks a month for like maybe 2 good games on that platform.

Can these thumbnails please stop?

@silversunzer0: I also don’t like the thumbnails and do think it cheapens the site in that YouTube sort of way.

Of course like any criticism levied against the site I expect plenty of people to call this an overblown overreaction.

They have been using YouTube more for the free videos, so I can see why they're experimenting with this popular thumbnail layout. That said, I'd prefer if they eventually realized that those thumbnails are just annoying.

Shin Sekai = New World?

imagine caring about a thumbnail

I don't care about most of these games but damn I wanna play Grindstone on my android

some of these games are totally fine.. but i wouldn't fire them up over a picross or sudoku personally. I also wonder how long devs will keep creating stuff for this after the honeymoon period. After all, the whole point of getting into the mobile business is to access the whales and have a steady income from that till the end of times. Getting a cut from a subscription that you have to share with hundred of other titles seems less lucrative. It being funded by apple alleviates risk, but the payoff isn't as large neither.

Here's my twitter thread I wrote a few months ago on the YouTube style thumbnails and my idea on how to improve on them:

Gallery

Refreshing to see some real constructive criticism, thanks for sharing @turboman!! I would definitely prefer your style of thumbnail, although I could see a potential problem; that is it's introducing an element of "editorial opinion" to a format which is (at least in theory) meant to be purely informative...

It's cool that there are (currently) no micro transactions, but I certainly wouldn't pat them on the back for that.... who wants to lay odds on when developers will start sneaking them back in to double dip into consumers pockets?

When Ben said that Sonic doesn't have the attack power to defeat DK, is he forgetting the countless machines, robots and vehicles he has defeated just by jumping on them?

Sonic would definitely win in a fight against DK.

Too bad there's so many nice looking games on this service, because I'll never play them as long as they're exclusive to phones. I just don't play phone games ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also I liked this thumbnail because I could see who was on stream before clicking on the video.

The thumbnails don't really bother me that much, even though a little bit of my soul dies when I see it.