Apple Arcade early access program now underway with Apple employees

By Aaron Mamiit Published August 18, 2019

The Apple Arcade early access program is currently ongoing, with Apple employees tapped to provide feedback on the video game subscription service.

Apple Arcade was unveiled earlier this year, promising gamers unlimited access to a wide variety of games for a monthly subscription fee. After downloading the games, they will be available for offline play.

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While its release date remains unknown beyond the vague range of fall this year, Apple has already started internal testing for the service among its employees.

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The Apple Arcade early access program, according to 9to5Mac, is not free for Apple staff though. Internal testers are being charged a subscription fee of $0.49 per month after a one-month free trial. The testing program will end with the release of iOS 13, which is expected in mid-September. This may also be when the service goes live for the public.

9to5Mac was able to gain access to Apple Arcade on the Mac App Store, bringing up a welcome page that will likely look similar to the final product.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The landing page offers access to a free one-month trial, which will also likely be found in the service once it is released to the general public. The $0.49 subscription fee, of course, will change, though the final price for an Apple Arcade subscription remains unknown.

After signing up for the trial or subscription, a new page will show up that contains featured games. Downloading games on Apple Arcade works just like on the App Store, according to 9to5Mac, with each listing containing information such as age rating, genre, and size. Most of the titles currently available for testing are marked as in-development builds though, as developers continue to work on them in preparation for the public launch of the service.

Apple Arcade, which will feature support for the controllers of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, is reportedly supported by investments worth more than $500 million, revealing a large commitment from Apple. In comparison, the budget for the initial roster of shows for Apple TV Plus is $1 billion. Apple is also said to be offering incentives to developers if they make games that are Apple Arcade exclusives for mobile platforms.

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We learned this while Apple was giving an overview of the Vision Pro's entertainment possibilities during the device's WWDC 2023 reveal. We saw footage of a person playing NBA 2K23 Arcade Edition with a DualSense controller while wearing the headset. The game appeared in its own dedicated flat window within the surrounding environment, so these aren't fully immersive dedicated VR games; it's more like playing normal PS5 games on your PlayStation VR2. The game will have some interactive 3D spatial apps, however, so those kinds of games certainly seem possible. A Unity partnership should also allow more games using that engine to come to Vision Pro.
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Apple's mobile game subscription service has been steadily running since its 2019 launch. In addition to adding new games monthly, Apple has revitalized the service with larger surprises of this scale. In 2021, the service added over 30 games and changed its model to bundle older mobile games into the platform. Today's update isn't quite that big, but it's one of the service's most substantial updates yet.