MIDIA claims 10% US consumers use Apple Arcade weekly

Blink and you may have missed it, but Apple Arcade has built a pretty substantial following, according to Midia Research – almost as many people are playing those games as people playing titles on Nintendo Switch or Steam, they claim.

One-in-ten Americans play Arcade games

The data is revealed in a short report looking at how Apple managed to make this dent in the games industry, which also explains why making that mark matters.

From the report:

“Apple Arcade is a similar story. In just a few years, it has managed to build up a solid foothold. 10% of US consumers use Apple Arcade weekly (MIDiA Research consumer survey Q4 2023). For context, this nearly matches that of Nintendo Switch Online or Steam (both at 11% in the US) and double Ubisoft+ (5%) or Nvidia’s GeForce Now (4%). Apple also has a number of Arcade originals.”

Why this matters of course is that Apple Arcade is grabbing gamer’s attention, and in the new subscription/attention economy that attention is the primary currency.

That means that if Apple has a game that convinces players of other titles to spend even a small amount of time regularly playing that title rather than a game from another publisher, that’s a win.

A good crowd

There is another reason, too.

“Apple users are some of the most valuable audiences an entertainment rightsholder could wish to reach. 21% of iPhone owners spend $5+ per month on games, compared to 16% of Android phone owners, while 58% spend one hour-plus per week on games, compared to 52% of Android users.”

No wonder JP Morgan predicted Arcade would become a billion dollar business on its own account by 2025…

Take a look at the rest of what Midia Research thinks here.

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