By now you’ve no doubt heard about, or likely tried Apple’s big new game subscription service AppleArcade. It is focused on bringing new, “premium” gaming experiences to Apple’s various platforms.
While this is certainly exciting for iOS gamers, the Arcade service leaves out Android gamers. Sure, Google has also launched their own Google Play Pass service which has some fantastic premium titles, but it is solely for Android gamers, leaving out iOS.
Why can’t a game subscription service cater to BOTH iOS AND Android gamers?
In addition to leaving out each other’s native platforms, both of these services also ignore the rich back catalog of premium, 4 and 5-star mobile games which have, for one reason or another, disappeared from the various App Stores over the years (many during Apple’s big 64-bit App-pocalypse).
Fortunately that’s where another, upcoming mobile game subscription service, called GameClub finds its niche.
GameClub’s goal is to cater to ALL mobile gamers, bringing back these classic, premium mobile gaming experiences, “updating over 100 classic, premium mobile games, optimizing them for the latest mobile devices, and re-releasing them with no ads or in-app purchases as part of a single subscription bundle”. Plus all games will be fully downloadable and playable on your mobile device with or without an internet connection.
GameClub’s “all-you-can-play” subscription service is launching globally on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) this Fall with at least 50 games from day one and new games being released weekly.
Some amazing titles have already been announced, including Super Crate Box (Vlambeer), iBlast Moki 2 (Godzi Lab), Legendary Wars (Liv Games), Minigore (Mountain Sheep), Space Miner (Venan Entertainment), Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style), Mage Gauntlet (Rocketcat Games), and many more.
Mobile gamers who can’t wait to play these games can sign up for the GameClub Early Access program at http://gameclub.io to begin receiving pre-launch TestFlight betas and other news about GameClub’s global launch.
It’s worth noting that all of the games have been carefully curated, in aggregate, the games in the GameClub library have been downloaded by over 100 million users over the past decade.
Where necessary, the graphics have been painstakingly updated and remastered to look fantastic on modern devices. Plus, since these titles were initially created specifically for mobile, touch-screen devices, you can guarantee a great mobile gaming experience. These games have never looked or played better.
I’ve been participating in some of the pre-launch TestFlight betas and it has been a blast fondly revisiting many of these early, groundbreaking iOS titles. Best of all…the gameplay still holds up!
There is no pricing information or specific launch date for GameClub available yet, but we have been told that the price will be competitive with Arcade.
Where GameClub will be cross-platform, I asked about the ability to play games on both iOS and Android for a single subscription fee and GameClub’s game curator and former TouchArcade Editor in Chief, Eli Hodapp said that this was still under development, but:
Our intention is to make it so no one needs to pay double for anything, whether that’s a game they already bought before or accessing their subscription they’re already paying for.
One Particularly awesome aspect of this club is that not only are these titles available exclusively to GameClub subscribers, but they will also be playable for FREE to users who have previously purchased them.
When asked for clarification on this, Eli told me that “their intention is that anyone who has ever purchased these games before, will be able to get the GameClub updates to them for free”.
He went on to add that “many games will either be unlocked automatically or via hitting ‘Restore Purchases’ and logging in with the App Store account they were originally purchased under.”
However, quite understandbly, due to technical reasons, “such as for games that had their original App Store listings deleted by publishers, this automatic restoration won’t be possible for all GameClub games”.
That being said, they do plan to have a support process in place “that will allow people to have these games unlocked by sending us any kind of proof of purchase”.
That’s an awesome and upright way to treat people who may have previously purchased these games and the team behind GameClub certainly seem to be going out of their way to offer a very attractive alternative or addition to the subscription services offered by Google and Apple.
Look for more details on this and more as GameClub gets closer to its global launch.
