Resident Evil 4 for iPhone Will Cost $60

[sack_peak]

No one in their right mind is going to drop $60 on this if they have a Mac/PC/Console that can run this game also...

They're not the primary target market. They're smart enough to buy it for $12 or less on whatever other preexisting hardware they have.

It is the equivalent of anyone with a fully furnished and functioning kitchen saying cooking at home is cheaper than eating out.

For those living in a room without any way to cook... it is economically cheaper to outsource a meal from Mickey Dee's.

Those are the sort of users Google and Apple are focusing on.

 

[sack_peak]

Unfortunately we are not talking 'just' any smartphones here. There is a pretty small percentage of that 5 billion who owns iPhone 15 Pro/Max, which is the only current phone that has CPU+GPU strong enough to play AAA games.

It's just day 11. Do you expect 1% of nearly 5 billion to buy nearly 50 million copies in less than 2 weeks?

Annual iPhone worldwide shipment is nearing a quarter billion.

Also, replacement cycle of phones is typically 3 years.

Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-2-year-mobile-phone-upgrade-cycle-is-mostly-dead

Within 5 years more than 90% will be using iPhones with ray tracing & 8GB RAM.

It took iPhone & Android nearly 5 years to destroy a lot of phone brands.

 

[Rafterman]

With the glut of pay to play apps, I'd gladly pay a one-time $60 fee for high quality software. But this particular game doesn't interest me...

 

[DonutHands]

Does not seem so bad when this garbage Toca Boca mini game thing my kids like is being sold for $100/year subscription.

 

[ErikGrim]

People are looking at this the wrong way. You now have a pocketable PS5 quality console.

 

[sack_peak]

View attachment 2282197

People are looking at this the wrong way. You now have a pocketable PS5 quality console.

Having a USB-C dock with an active cooling fan, USB PD, HDMI-out and a way to turn off the iPhone's screen when playing on a 4K TV will make it a Switch superior.

 

[Naraxus]

I won’t even call them supporters. This is just moving the goalposts. The lack of quality games in the iOS App Store was just one more convenient area they could criticise Apple over, until they couldn’t, and now they are moving on to the next area of criticism - the price.

We can still criticize Apple for a lack of quality games in the App Store because that's exactly what there is - a lack of them - and a handful here and there like an 18 year old game like RE4 isn't changing that. Price is an additional avenue for criticism. This is an 18 year old video game. It shouldn't command a recent-release price.

 

[Shirasaki]

Goodluck with that

At least it’s not free to play riddles with $99.99 power packs/credits

Hahaha...no thanks.

Much cheaper than free to play games. Yes you heard that right.

That's more than it costs on console.

PS5 and iPhone doesn’t use the same architecture. Tho would be cool if they do.

It's as if all third party products/services are overpriced to Apple customers... wonder why 🤣.

And people wonder why iOS devs put up BIG fights to force Apple change rather than just pack up and leave.

Why is the fact that it plays on M1 Macs not the lead, with the fact that it's playable on the iPhone relegated to also status?

There's no way I'm using my iPhone as my main gaming device and I'm certainly not paying $60 for an iPhone game. But I'll gladly pay $60 for a console quality game I can play on my MacBook Pro, and it only sweetens the pot if I can also play on my mobile devices.

Believe it or not, lots of folks, presumably having 20/20 vision and/or very young, can only Play games on their iPhone. I have long since graduated from phone player crowd and transition to iPad, but yeah.
As for MacBook… I mean forget it. You really need something at the very least M1 Pro with more GPU cores and 16 GB of Ram to truly make game enjoyable rather than slideshow or extremely low visual quality, in a game where beautiful scenery and amazing visual is one key selling point. How much those machines cost? $2k minimum.
Same $2k, why not spending on better phone that can also play the game vs getting a low end phone and a base range MacBook Pro just to play the game? I would like to spend money on those things but others don’t want to.

 

[redbeard331]

At first I thought this was ridiculous, but as long as it doesn’t have endless daily and weekly in app purchases it’s actually dirt cheap compared to some games. I have a bowling game on my phone, and they’ve made it so expensive to advance it’s not worth playing anymore. And by expensive I mean they charge 100 dollars for a temporary boost that you can buy every week.

There was a bowling ball I wanted to upgrade, but at the rate they trickle the points you need to upgrade, and the insane cost, it might take me 2-3 years just to upgrade a bowling ball to the next level. Are you following? It gets worse, in order to upgrade it right away I’d have to spend 400 dollars to buy enough gold coins in order to upgrade that ball today. 400 dollars, to upgrade, one ball, to the next level. Of course whoever makes that game is criminally insane, but makes 60 for resident evil not seem so bad. 😳

 

[Shirasaki]

It’s also a sad indictment of how the App Store is now synonymous with freemium games riddled with ads and IAP, and Apple needs a separate service (Arcade) in order the surface the better ones. I am not sure a few titles here and there will change anything.

And they have largely failed to take off on that front imo. I mean Apple Arcade.
Meanwhile big freemium games still racks 300%-900% profit margin, something these kind of release could only dream of.

 

[Shirasaki]

At first I thought this was ridiculous, but as long as it doesn’t have endless daily and weekly in app purchases it’s actually dirt cheap compared to some games. I have a bowling game on my phone, and they’ve made it so expensive to advance it’s not worth playing anymore. And by expensive I mean they charge 100 dollars for a temporary boost that you can buy every week.

There was a bowling ball I wanted to upgrade, but at the rate they trickle the points you need to upgrade, and the insane cost, it might take me 2-3 years just to upgrade a bowling ball to the next level. Are you following? It gets worse, in order to upgrade it right away I’d have to spend 400 dollars to buy enough gold coins in order to upgrade that ball today. 400 dollars, to upgrade, one ball, to the next level. Of course whoever makes that game is criminally insane, but makes 60 for resident evil not seem so bad. 😳

Free to play game was, still is, and will forever be THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME to play. Thats the entire foundation of its business model. Yes, I do play those, and yes, I do spend a lot Of money into it. (I mean a LOT) But that’s just me.

In that sense, $60 for weeks or even months of enjoyment is a steal, yet people just fail to acknowledge that And scoff at the $60 price plus maybe some DLC and packs and whatnot. $200 one-time payment vs $200 every 3 months (To keep your account up with others). Which one is cheaper?

 

[LogicalApex]

It's just day 11. Do you expect 1% of nearly 5 billion to buy nearly 50 million copies in less than 2 weeks?

Annual iPhone worldwide shipment is nearing a quarter billion.

Also, replacement cycle of phones is typically 3 years.

Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-2-year-mobile-phone-upgrade-cycle-is-mostly-dead

Within 5 years more than 90% will be using iPhones with ray tracing & 8GB RAM.

It took iPhone & Android nearly 5 years to destroy a lot of phone brands.

It is possible. It just seems like a weird path when Apple has struggled hard to hold the AAA game developer market.

I expect that to continue honestly.

Why would I game on my Apple products? My gaming and coding desktop has the following specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
64GB DDR5
4TB of NVMe SSD storage
GTX 3090

Those are specs I can’t reasonably replicate on my Mac at all.

To make matters messier. Apple doesn’t support DirectX or Vulcan and are using Metal. So AAA game developers aren’t able to leverage a familiar framework.

So this will go through the same phase AAA gaming on Apple products always goes. An uptick when Apple tries to push interest. Then it fizzles out as there really isn’t a market for it.

The market that Apple could push would be some tie in where the AAA game would work across platform. Like a Steam tie in or something to give you the chance to pick up the game and continue on mobile. To try and offer a steam deck like competitor. But that is never happening.

 

[unQuestionable]

Down the road with USB-C -> HDMI adapters and low-latency bluetooth (if that 'game mode' works with iOS), iPhones have a small but non-zero chance of overtaking or at least competing with game consoles. Game center is a mess though, but if Apple continues to court AAA developers and reinvigorates Game Center I think this could prove at least somewhat viable.

The price is high for now but it will come down via sales. Our Phones are faster than many game consoles now, and soon they will be faster than the highest-end ones so it is a target worth pursuing.

It wouldn't shock me if in a couple of years we see an "Apple TV Pro" that is designed around gaming with an A18 Pro equivalent. Took a decade longer than everyone thought it would, but it could happen.

Sooner than you think.

 

[Nermal]

Did they re-do the voice acting as well or is it still the same as it was in the original version?

I never played the original but I believe it's all re-done. At the very least I've heard that all the Spanish no longer has a Mexican accent.

 

[XciteMePls]

I mean, it is a console quality version

Ugh... People like you make us normal Apple fans look bad. There's no excusing this. It won't look as good as the PS5/Series X version, and oh... you're playing on a phone screen with touch controls.

 

[Soonerpet]

I don’t understand this, who is this for? Why would anyone spend $60 for a subpar, touch controlled experience on a small, fingerprint smudged screen when you could just spend the same amount or less on real computer or console version?

This has the same Diablo Immortal announcement vibe to me. ”don’t you all have phones?”

Phone games are a totally different animal to me, they are generally just for puzzle games for passing time while I’m waiting in line for something. I’m not going to invest 30+ hours to complete a full game like this on a phone, that is what a computer or console is for.

 

[LogicalApex]

I don’t understand this, who is this for? Why would anyone spend $60 for a subpar, touch controlled experience on a small, fingerprint smudged screen when you could just spend the same amount or less on real computer or console version?

This has the same Diablo Immortal announcement vibe to me. ”don’t you all have phones?”

Phone games are a totally different animal to me, they are generally just for puzzle games for passing time while I’m waiting in line for something. I’m not going to invest 30+ hours to complete a full game like this on a phone, that is what a computer or console is for.

Yep.

And once you have all the extra crap connected to the phone to make it feasible. Then you wonder why you wouldn’t just buy a Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally or a Switch? Same extra crap needed, but you’ll get a much larger and deeper game library. And with the Steam Deck or Ally I can start on my PC and go to the device in bed and back to the PC.

 

[Maven1975]

If Apple is serious, rather when they are ready to be serious, prices will reflect it. Right now I personally believe they are just getting what they can in the store and pipeline. This help’s preemptively get the buzz out there that gaming can be achieved.

Once Apple has capabilities across all devices, this in my mind is about iPhone 17 and an ATV fit for the task, we shall see a difference in stance on pricing.

Meanwhile, devs can either choose to port or have Apple themselves pay for their porting efforts if they do choose to continue to build a gaming ecosystem.

Time will tell if they actually want this on their devices for real. It could just be a half step. Who knows…

As a LONG time user, I can tell you they did the same with their own, well behind releases years ago. It was only when the retailers decided to put software on clearance that it made sense to even try or buy it.

I certainly hope they don’t think this is something that’s going to be fruitful in this day and age.

 

[gaximus]

Realistically, those of us who play on console choose the console specifically. Performance is part of the equation, sure, but it's also a chicken and egg scenario. What platform has the rest of the games I want to play? What platform supports the subscription services I use (e.g. Game Pass)? What console supports the gaming communities I'm part of?

I have zero issues paying $60 (or way more) for a game I want to play. But I won't spend it on a platform that is an island by design.

A console is a platform that is an island by design. It wasn’t until very recently that cross platform play was even possible, and most games still don’t allow it. And all console games are cross platform compatible. And they are becoming even less sellable/shareable as time goes on with digital downloads.

I prefer console online gaming for one reason, level playing field, I know that no one will be better than me because they spent $1000 on a gaming mouse, or $1500 extra on a GPU. I want to know that I lost because I suck.

 

[dukebound85]

lol console it is if I were to even get the game

 

[dukebound85]

I mean, it is a console quality version

is it though?... lol

 

[lolkthxbai]

The article doesn’t explicitly explain that the game is free to download. In the details on the AppStore page it says you can play a limited part of the game for free before you have to pay $60 to unlock the full game. It’s worth downloading for free to see how good the graphics really are and then deciding whether it’s worth $60 just like a console game.

 

[ShootingStarPho]

On a positive note, it will be playable on Mac, iPad, and iPhone (maybe Vision Pro too?) all with one purchase, so that makes it more palatable, if one is indeed in the ecosystem.

I imagine that the cost to port the game may be a factor too.

If this does even moderately well, it may fund future work to make porting games to the ‘Apple Orchard’ of devices more straightforward.

This can result in prices that can be more reflective of the perceived value that appears to be merely a 6” screen console game, e.g. $20-$45.

 

[Phil A.]

We can still criticize Apple for a lack of quality games in the App Store because that's exactly what there is - a lack of them - and a handful here and there like an 18 year old game like RE4 isn't changing that. Price is an additional avenue for criticism. This is an 18 year old video game. It shouldn't command a recent-release price.

It’s not an 18 year old game, though: it was released in March this year and is very much a triple A game.

It’s the same price on XBox, PS5 and PC and it’s a universal purchase title so the price includes the ability to play on your phone, iPad and Mac

I think the tone of the article is what’s leading to the negativity in this thread: if it had said that it’s coming to the Mac for $60 and includes the iOS version in the price then the tone in here would have been much more positive

 

[redbeard331]

Free to play game was, still is, and will forever be THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME to play. Thats the entire foundation of its business model. Yes, I do play those, and yes, I do spend a lot Of money into it. (I mean a LOT) But that’s just me.

In that sense, $60 for weeks or even months of enjoyment is a steal, yet people just fail to acknowledge that And scoff at the $60 price plus maybe some DLC and packs and whatnot. $200 one-time payment vs $200 every 3 months (To keep your account up with others). Which one is cheaper?

It’s all nuts, I could easily spend more on this one dumb phone game every month than I do on rent! I’d rather get a console than spend anymore on smartphone games.