Apple Arcade may not have gotten off to the most promising start at Apple’s iPhone 11 keynote — the company decided to show a minutes-long demo of… Frogger in Toy Town to showcase the service — but Apple has been steadily revealing a lot more interesting titles for Arcade, which gives us a better idea of the level of quality the company is hoping to achieve.LACKLUSTER AT FIRST, UNTIL YOU LOOK CLOSER
The titles are an interesting mix of big-name game studios and indie developers. But it’s a surprisingly deep lineup that goes way beyond the lackluster onstage debut. My colleague Dieter Bohn got to try out a few of the upcoming games, and his take is: “All the games are good.” Even that Frogger game has more to it than first thought. It’s made by Q-Games, which previously made PixelJunk Monsters, and it’s almost indicative of the entire Arcade reveal: lackluster at first, until you look closer and see that there’s actually a lot happening.
When Cards Fall
From Snowman (the studio behind Alto’s Adventure), there’s Where Cards Fall, a meditative puzzle game, and Skate City, a skateboard game that excels on a touchscreen (although playing with a controller is apparently less fun).
There’s Spek (from RAC7), a colorful puzzle game that also offers an AR mode, which Dieter says was “the only enjoyable AR game” he’s ever played.
It’s not just puzzle games or mobile platformers, though: deeper, longer games will also be available, like Finji’s post-apocalyptic, turn-based survival game Overland, which is making the jump from PC to join the Arcade lineup. There’s also the surprisingly Breath of the Wild-looking Oceanhorn 2, and Various Daylife, a brand-new RPG from Square Enix, the makers of Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler.
Oceanhorn 2
Big-budget studios have games coming, too: Sega will have Sonic Racing and a new ChuChu Rocket puzzler called ChuChu Rocket Universe. There’s Pac-Man Party Royale fromBandai Namco, while Capcom will have Shantae and the Seven Sirens andShinsekai: Into the Depths. Devolver Digital will also have a few titles: Exit the Gungeon (a spinoff of the popular rogue-like shooter Enter the Gungeon)andCricket Through the Ages.
From Annapurna, there’s the “playable music video” Sayonara Wild Hearts, which Apple showed off onstage at its event, as well as the more mysterious adventure game The Pathless, which has been one of Apple’s highlighted games in a lot of the marketing for Arcade. The Pathless is the second game from studio Giant Squid, which made the critically acclaimed Abzu and is led byMatt Nava, the art director for Journey.
Sayonara Wild Hearts.
There are also some surprises, like the long-anticipated, Escher-esque Manifold Garden, which will finally be released on Apple Arcade (as well as the Epic Game Store), although there’s still no formal release date attached.ALL OF THIS IS JUST SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
A video posted by Apple after the event showed off even more games, including Hot Lava;Jenny LeClue – Detectivu, a narrative detective game; and the multiplayer Lego Brawls, which features a uniquely Apple-leveraging mode that lets players link up for local multiplayer on their own devices and uses an Apple TV as a scoreboard.
All of this is just scratching the surface, too. Apple is promising “100+ new games rolling out this fall,” which means that if none of the above titles sound appealing, odds are, there’s something worth playing in the mix. While it’s not likely that everysingle one of these games will be a winner, if you’re already paying the $5 for Apple Arcade anyway, Apple’s hoping that you’ll likely give at least a few of these games a try once you’re on board. That said, Apple hasn’t announced what the lineup will look like at launch or at what rate new titles will be added, so stay tuned for more details as the launch approaches on September 19th.
Apple has shared a new fast-paced ad today for its upcoming Apple Arcade service showing gameplay from a range of the exclusive titles that are launching next week. At its September iPhone event, Apple confirmed the $4.99/month pricing along with announcing the launch date of September 19.
The new Apple Arcade ad tries to cover as many of the upcoming 100 games as possible in 100 seconds with a goofy sportscaster-style narration.
Titles and gameplay highlighted in the video include Hot Lava, Earth Night, Skate City, Jenny LeClue, LEGO Brawls, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Sonic Racing, Pac-Man Party Royale, Frogger in Toy Town, Shinsekai: Into the Depths, and more.
Looking for a fun, on-the-go gaming machine? Razer may have the gadget for you, with a new patent for a tablet gaming controller that sounds (and looks) an awful lot like the Nintendo Switch‘s Joy-Con controllers.
Taking the form of two slim, detachable controllers that attach to the side of a “mobile device”, with four input buttons and a joystick on each one, there’s more than a passing similarity to the Joy-Cons – which slide on and off the body of Nintendo’s Switch console, depending on whether you’re playing in handheld or docked mode (or just when leaning the Switch on its rear stand).
The patent describes Razer’s controllers as being “mechanically secured” to the sides of a “mobile device”, meaning we could see this either for a large smartphone or a small Windows tablet.
The patent was spotted by Dutch technology website Let’sGoDigital, and was published in early August after an application dated to March of this year.
Apple has officially announced its latest iPhones and confirmed that, yes, there’s a huge, squircle-shaped camera bump on the back of each of these new phones. On the flagship iPhone Pro models, it contains three separate cameras, and on the iPhone 11, there are two.
Each camera has its own purpose, and you’ll want to use them for different photo scenarios.
IPHONE 11
12MP regular camera | 26mm f/1.8 | Optical image stabilization: The standard iPhone camera has been upgraded with a new Night mode that should be able to better compete with Night Sight on Google’s Pixel smartphones in terms of low-light performance. Apple has also improved image processing to preserve more highlights and details in each shot.
12MP ultra-wide camera | 13mm f/2.4 | 120-degree field of view: Instead of following its own tradition with a portrait lens, Apple made the somewhat surprising decision to go with an ultra-wide camera that will allow iPhone 11 owners to capture more of their surroundings in every photo. The camera app’s viewfinder will show you both what the main camera sees and a preview of what would be in the ultra-wide shot.
Front camera: 12MP TrueDepth camera with slo-mo video and 4K60 recording: Apple’s selfie camera can now capture wider-angle shots when rotated to landscape. The company is also adding slow-motion video recording.
IPHONE PRO AND PRO MAX
12MP regular camera | 26mm f/1.8 | Optical image stabilization
12MP ultra-wide camera | 13mm f/2.4 | 120-degree field of view
12MP telephoto / portrait lens | 52mm f/2.0 | Optical image stabilization: Apple’s latest camera designed for portrait photos is exclusive to the iPhone 11 Pro models.
Front camera: 12MP TrueDepth camera with slo-mo video and 4K60 recording
NEW SOFTWARE TRICKS
Apple says it has made significant improvements to photo and video processing with the latest iPhone cameras. The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro preserve highlights and more detail in each still shot, and they’ve been optimized for low-light settings with the help of a new Night mode.
With all new iPhone models now having multiple cameras, Apple has taken effort to prevent shifts in exposure and color tone when changing between them — especially when recording video. The iPhone 11 Pro will let app developers record with more than one camera simultaneously for more creative possibilities. And an audio zoom feature will hone in on whatever sound is coming from the subject you’re pointing the cameras at.
Specifically for the iPhone 11 Pro, Phil Schiller previewed an upcoming Deep Fusion feature that analyzes 9 photos (including one long-exposure shot) taken in sequence. The device’s neural engine then analyzes the collection to create an optimal end photo that borrows the best elements of each image. Schiller said it was “computational photography mad science.” Deep Fusion is coming in the fall.
Apple moved to a dual-camera system starting with the iPhone 7 Plus, adding a telephoto / portrait lens with a closer perspective to complement the standard-angle camera. The portrait lens remained exclusive to Plus models until the iPhone X in 2017. Since then, the X, XS, and XS Max have all featured two cameras. The iPhone XR stuck with just one.
Back in February, Nike announced that it was partnering with the League of Legends Pro League in China to become the official apparel provider for all of the league’s 16 clubs. Today, the company finally unveiled just what those jerseys will look like. Starting next year, each team will sport a nearly identical kit, with a standardized jersey design that features a single-button collar and a chevron across the chest. The unique aspects come in the form of color and details.
For reigning world champions Invictus Gaming, the team’s white jerseys feature a chevron designed to look like angel wings, along with a single gold star above their team logo, indicating the Worlds win. (The IG angel wings are similar to the team’s in-game skins.) Meanwhile, the kits for Fun Plus Phoenix, which just won the LPL summer championship over the weekend, feature a bright red feather pattern on the chevron, while RNG’s is dominated by golden dragon scales.
All three teams will debut the jerseys during the 2019 League of Legends World Championships, which kick off on October 2nd, while the rest of the LPL will wear them during the 2020 season. You can get a closer look at some of the designs in the gallery below. GRID VIEW
This kind of standardized jersey design isn’t unique to the LPL — Blizzard’s Overwatch League features something similar — but the new Nike jerseys are easily some of the best in e-sports, which isn’t a space that’s particularly well-known for its sense of style, outside of a few notable exceptions.
The partnership between Nike and the LPL extends beyond just the jerseys. Nike also unveiled a new LOL-themed clothing collection, and on its Weibo account, the company recently posted a video that shows LPL players visiting Nike HQ to take a series of performance tests that helped inform the apparel design.
The new Nike uniforms will go on sale on October 1st.
Fresh off of a well-publicized split from Twitch, streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins today announced a partnership with Adidas. There aren’t any shoes or apparel for sale right now, but on his Mixer stream, Blevins said, “I can’t say specifically what is in the works with Adidas, but use your imagination.”
Apparel companies signing deals with gaming stars is a relatively new phenomenon. Nike signed a deal earlier this year to make jerseys for the League of Legends Pro League in China, which are expected to debut at the 2019 League of Legends World Championship in Paris in October. Champion and K-Swiss have also signed apparel deals with individual teams and players.
The partnership with Adidas is far from Ninja’s first with a brand. He’s long partnered with Samsung and has appeared in the company’s #TeamGalaxy ad campaign, promoted the Galaxy S10 exclusive K-Pop-themed Fortnite skin and emote, and opened a Samsung-madeFortnite “supply drop” with a Galaxy Note 9 inside. Ninja also makes money from a number of other deals, including a long-running Red Bull sponsorship, YouTube ads, and he gets paid to play certain games, including a reported $1 million for playing EA’s Apex Legends at its launch earlier this year. He also just released a book.
On his Mixer stream, Ninja said more details on the collaboration will be out soon.
Nintendo’s long-awaited and delayedMario Kart smartphone game is almost here. Mario Kart Tour will be released on September 25th, according to a tweet from the company. The release date presumably applies to both iOS and Android devices, although the game’s beta program was Android-only.
That beta revealed Mario Kart Tour’s overwrought free-to-play monetization model, involving lots of microtransactions and cool-down timers. None of it should be a surprise for anyone who’s seen Nintendo’s other mobile games, like Fire Emblem Heroes and Dr. Mario World, but it’s possible the company might have tweaked the balance following feedback from the beta.
Pre-registration for Mario Kart Tour is available now.
The PS5 is still over a year away from release, but as we hear more about the Sony console’s features, specifications, and PS5 games, it’s hard not to get excited even this long in advance. And that was before this patent came our way, showing a Sony-registered device that is very possibly the PlayStation 5 itself.
The patent in question was registered as a Sony electronic device on August 13, after applying for the patent back in May of this year – showing a console-shaped device that seems highly unlikely to be anything but the PS5. The patent page we have is through LetsGoDigital, and we haven’t found the WIPO listing itself, but we think this is on pretty good authority.
The patent is registered through the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office), with Sony technical director Yusuhiro Ootori also being listed on the patent as its designer too.
Sony PS5 patent: what does this mean?
What’s most fascinating about the PS5 patent is its V-shaped design, possible in reference the Roman numeral V (meaning ‘5’). On the diagram you can see a number of USB ports for DualShock controllers, as well as a line of buttons that would likely correspond to ejecting discs, turning on power, and other connectivity features. There’s a thin slot that’s likely the disc drive too.
The ribbed sides and edges appear to show the ventilation system, which would need to be pretty substantial to deal with the PS5’s massive jump in power over the current generation of PlayStation consoles.
Finished products never look quite like their patent diagrams, of course, and it’s very possible this is a placeholder image or an early build of what will eventually become the PS5. Sony does like to feature a numerical count on its consoles, with tiers being cut into the shape of its PS3 and PS4 to represent the increasing number. So it’s very possible this is the PS5 design so many of us will have in our homes in the near future.
We were able to gain access to a special internal early access program aimed at Apple employees, which allowed us to go hands-on with Apple Arcade on a MacBook Pro running the latest macOS Catalina beta. As was noted by 9to5Mac’s Gui Rambo, Apple is charging a small subscription fee of $0.49/mo to test Apple Arcade until iOS 13 launches later in the fall.
Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube, and watch our hands-on video walkthrough, as we take Apple Arcade for a brief spin to highlight the six games — Way of the Turtle, Down in Bermuda, Hot Lava, Kings of the Castle, Sneaky Sasquatch, and Frogger in Toy Town — available during the initial early access period.
Apple Arcade can be found within the Arcade tab of the Mac App Store for early access members.
Before downloading any games to my Mac, I needed to click the Try It Free button to subscribe. Doing so provides early access users with one month of free Apple Arcade, with a $0.49 charge a month until iOS 13 lands.
Subscribing worked just like signing up to any other subscription within the Mac App Store. I simply clicked the Try button, entered my Apple ID password, and I was good to do. Once the subscription was confirmed, the ‘Try’ buttons next to each game transitioned into the familiar ‘Get’ buttons, which allowed me to download all six games locally to my Mac.
The game sizes will obviously vary depending on the type of game, and the type of assets included within each title. Flagship games like Hot Lava, for instance, came in at 4.7 GB. Each game has its own dedicated page on the Mac App Store, with auto-playing video previews at the top of the page, along with screenshots and compatibility information about the title below.
Keep in mind that these games are early access, meaning they’re essentially running early in-development builds of the game, and don’t fully represent what gamers will see once Apple Arcade goes live later in the fall. That said, the program gives us a good idea of what to expect from these six titles once Apple Arcade launches.
Way of the Turtle
The first game that I tried was Way of the Turtle, a simple platform game that follows the adventures of a newly-married turtle trying to find his lost wife. The game is a mix of walking, jumping, and solving puzzles.
Way of the Turtle’s control scheme mixes elements of an automatic runner together with a hint of puzzle-oriented gameplay. It’s compatible with controllers, but it doesn’t feel as connected to the controller as traditional platformers due to the runner-style gameplay. That said, the control style means that it will work well enough across different input methods such as keyboards, touch screens, and controllers.
Down in Bermuda
Down in Bermuda is from Yak & Co, developers of the popular Agent A – A Puzzle in Disguiseadventure game. The point-and-click style adventure game stars the adventurous aviator Milton, who leaves his family behind to voyage across the Atlantic on the journey of a lifetime.
This appears to be a very early build of Down in Bermuda, but like Agent A, it features beautiful graphics with bold lines and colors. Once it’s complete it should translate well to all Apple Arcade platforms.
Sneaky Sasquatch
RAC7, the two-man team behind such titles as Dark Echo and Splitter Critters, are bringing Sneaky Sasquatch to Apple Arcade. The action/adventure escapade puts gamers in control of the titular character in search of food at a local campsite.
During the action, which involves various amounts of stealth elements to avoid pesky park rangers, gamers can expect all sorts of crazy shenanigans involving various NPCs, humans, and animals alike. You’ll find the Sasquatch driving cars, shopping at stores, playing mini golf, and much more.
It’s unfair to compare games at these varying stages of development, but Sneaky Sasquatch felt like the most complete game of the six that I tried. It features outstanding visual design, a wide variety of activities and control schemes, and humorous writing and NPC interactions. I’ll go out on a limb and say that Sneaky Sasquatch will be at the top of the list of games to try on Apple Arcade launch on day one.
Hot Lava
Klei Entertainment’s Hot Lava, which is available on Steam in beta, is a first-person action game that plays off the popular kids’ make-believe game where the floor is lava.
Hot Lava places gamers in such environments as schools, homes, and more. Players can run, jump, slide, hang on ropes, grab on edges, and employ a variety of other parkour mechanics to avoid the lava. For instance, once you get up to a certain speed you can “surf” along frictionless surfaces as you navigate treacherous terrain.
Although Hot Lava can be played with a mouse and keyboard, I think I’d much prefer using my Xbox controller. The game’s settings feature controller support but, in this particular build, it didn’t seem to be activated just yet.
When maxing out the visual settings, Hot Lava’s graphics hiccuped a bit on my base model 2019 MacBook Pro. Some of that could be due to unoptimized code in the early access beta. However, connecting my Blackmagic eGPU Pro made a world of difference in performance. If you plan on gaming on low-level Macs, it might be a good idea to look into an eGPU like the Razer Core X.
All of that said, there’s a reason why Apple’s showcased the Hot Lava trailer on stage at its streaming event earlier this spring. It’s ridiculously fun and features many hilarious throwback 80s-era elements. I have a feeling that this will be among the more popular Apple Arcade launch titles.
Kings of the Castle
Canadian-based Frosty Pop, creator of currently available iOS games like Kingpin Bowling, and High Dive, is no stranger to the iPhone and Apple TV as gaming platforms. The company’s first Apple Arcade game, entitled Kings of the Castle, adopts some of the same visual styling found in its previous titles.
Kings of the Castle is a multiplayer first-person action/adventure game but, in what is obviously a very early build of the title, gameplay is limited to single-player action on a single level.
The game starts out with an eight-minute timer that counts down, while you traverse an island map in search of gemstones, and keys to unlock doors. Occasionally you’ll encounter enemies that require you react to certain on-screen prompts. It reminds me of a modified version of the Quick Time Events from Sega’s classic Shenmue.
Kings of the Castle is the most colorful game of the six previewed during the early access trial. It features basic platforming elements in 3D space that can be controlled by a hardware controller, but it’s too early to provide any real feedback about the experience.
Frogger in Toy Town
Developed and published by Konami specifically for Apple Arcade, Frogger in Toy Town is a take on the original Frogger game with 3D top-down elements. If you’ve ever played Frogger, which traditionally involves helping a frog cross a street and the various obstacles that come with it, then you’ll largely know what to expect.
In Frogger in Toy Town, each level is broken up into various sections. The Suburban Home level, for example, features three playable areas including the kitchen, living room, and front yard area. Each section features three separate objectives, such as completing a play-through without getting hit by a car, without drowning, without being burned by the stove, and rescuing froglets.
Like other games in the early access preview, Frogger in Toy Town is still in its early phase, and its gameplay and visual look is thus subject to change.
9to5Mac’s Take
Even in early access, it’s clear to me that Apple Arcade has a lot of potential. Now that we know that the monthly subscription price will be $4.99, I think it’ll be a no-brainer for anyone who enjoys playing games.
Remember, Apple Arcade will include access to 100+ games on demand for one low subscription fee. Even better is the fact that all games will be available across multiple Apple platforms like the Mac, Apple TV, and iOS devices.
Mac App Store Apple Arcade hands-on
What’s still unclear is how Apple will go about fully unifying the experience across individual games and across these platforms. As it stands now, each game feels like its own separate individual entity, with its own settings. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple will maintain the distribution method that they’re currently using in early access, or if it will take further steps to make the experience more cohesive and easy to use for casual gamers.
There’s also the matter of device support since the power of these devices can vary quite a bit. For example, my 2019 MacBook Pro, while adequate for most casual computing tasks, definitely struggled when running games like Hot Lava at high settings. I imagine that such games running on modern iPad or iPhone hardware would perform better on those platforms.
Sneaky Sasquatch Apple Arcade hands-on
But what most impresses me about Apple Arcade is the quality of games like Hot Lava, and especially Sneaky Sasquatch, which seems to me like it’ll be a hit once it launches.
Even if only 25% of the games on Apple Arcade are as good as these titles, that’s still access to a whole lot of great games for a whole year for less than the price of a single AAA console title.
Do you plan on subscribing to Apple Arcade? What do you think about the early access games? Sound off down below in the comments with your thoughts and opinions.
Nintendo claims that the only difference between its new, revised Switch and the older model is improved battery life. Not content to take Nintendo’s word for it, some popular YouTubers put their brand new, currently hard-to-find units to the test, cracking them open to search for any new undisclosed features or hardware tweaks along the way.
The consensus? Nintendo isn’t fibbing about that battery life. But unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything else inside to get too excited about.
Depending on the game that’s being played, the new Switch is supposed to last between 4.5 and 9 hours compared to the original’s range of 2.5 to 6.5 hours of battery life. That’s a huge improvement, and one that’s especially impressive considering its battery is no bigger than the one inside the original Switch. Videos from Austin Evans and Kevin Kenson put these numbers to the test in the real-world, and the results after draining both the new and old Switch systems side-by-side with games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild and Super Mario Odyssey suggest that Nintendo’s claims are accurate.
If you’re looking for more reasons to upgrade to the new Switch than just for its improved battery life, you should be skeptical of what some teardowns conclude. Like, some claim that the screen in the revised Switch is definitively brighter, with better white balance than the older model. Others say the joysticks built into the included Joy-Con are different from the old ones, and claim that means they’ve been improved, perhaps to fix the Joy-Con drift issuethat Nintendo itself recently acknowledged.
But as Erica Griffin’s teardown points out (above), subtle hardware variances make it hard to pinpoint exactly what’s changed, for better or worse, in the new Switch’s screen, or its Joy-Con arrangement, compared to the older Switch. Griffin has several Switch models (a few older models, two new ones) and different Joy-Cons on-hand (also a mix of new and old), and her testing shows that there’s a lot of variance in the screen’s color temperature, its brightness, as well as how some of the Joy-Con’s internal components appear in a teardown.
The revised Nvidia Tegra X1 processor inside of the new Switch
As we discovered in documents posted to the FCC, the new Switch revision does run on a slightly different Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. But we didn’t get to see it until Spawn Wave, a YouTube channel, did the work of cracking open their unit, wiping away the thermal compound, and taking a few high-resolution shots of the chip. They claim that the die has been shrunk from 20nm in the older Switch to 16nm in the new version, but again, it seems that increased battery life is the only perk of this upgrade.
I don’t want to call off the search just yet for other new, interesting features that may still lie in hiding inside the revised Switch, but it seems like we’ll have to wait until the rumored Switch Pro until we really have something exciting to look forward to. Still, if you don’t own a Switch yet, or merely want to upgrade, you should keep a look-out for the improved model. My colleague Chris Welch put together a list of tips to make sure you’re buying the right Switch, so maybe check that out so you don’t go home with the wrong one.
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