7 Years Later, Apple’s Gaming Push Has Proven Surprisingly Resilient

The latest example of that came this week as Apple launched an App Store event dubbed Indie Games Week. The week-long initiative saw Apple welcoming games like Vampire Crawlers to iOS and announcing an ambitious mobile version of No Man’s Sky. At the center of that push was Carson Oliver, the new head of App Store Worldwide following Phil Schiller’s sudden departure from the role this past August. The fact that one of his first acts in the role was spearheading an indie gaming showcase hints at where Oliver’s priorities might lie.

In his first interview since stepping into the role, Oliver told Polygon where Apple is currently at in its long journey to finding its position in gaming. While Apple Arcade still seems to be part of the plan, Oliver’s more zoomed-out view signals a potential future where the App Store could become as commonplace a home for premium indie games as Steam.

“From day one, the App Store was built to level the playing field for discovery and distribution, so that an indie title can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the biggest entertainment franchises,” Oliver told Polygon in an email interview.

Apple’s push into gaming over the past decade has at times been hard to pin down, but also deceptively consistent. Since launching the experimental Apple Arcade, Apple has continued to poke at gaming from any angle it could find. On a big picture level, Oliver notes that gaming has “always” been central to the App Store, and that Apple’s strategy has evolved over time to meet players’ habits and give them more choice. But if it feels like Apple is getting more aggressive in its pursuits these days, that’s a matter of tech.

“What’s accelerating today is the technology powering that ecosystem,” Oliver said. “We support developers on the App Store with far more than distribution. We continue to invest heavily in gaming: from new hardware technologies that deliver the highest sustained performance, like hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the A20 Pro and the next-generation vapor chamber in the iPhone 18 Pro; to developer tools, like Game Porting Toolkit 4, Metal, and our open-source Unity plug-ins.”

That’s a lot of confident bravado stuffed with technical terminology, but there’s reason to believe that it’s not just corporate hype. Hello Games recently announced that it will bring No Man’s Sky to iPhone and iPad later this month in a miracle port that includes all ten years of updates in a mere 5GB game that can run on an iPhone 11. When I spoke to Hello Games founder Sean Murray about the feat, he was quick to give credit to how powerful Apple’s devices have become over the past few years.

Having a capable platform is part of the battle, but convincing developers to actually bring their games to it is no easy task. What’s Apple’s secret for courting big name studios? Part of it comes down to address some common challenges that developers face with distribution. A marketplace like Steam or the Nintendo Switch eShop is often so flooded with games that it’s hard for any one game to break through the noise. Apple has tried to address discoverability with “human curation,” using a global editorial team that is dedicated to finding and highlighting new games.

“We also provide indie developers with tools and services to break through to new audiences and drive engagement,” Oliver added. “For example, we just launched Creative Assets. This new feature lets indie game developers tell their game's story in a richer way by showcasing artwork of their choosing in two of the most important places players find games: search results and product page headers.”

Indie Games Week is an extension of that thinking. The event, which kicked off on Monday, was designed to celebrate independent games featured on the App Store. Seven titles came to iOS as part of that push, including critical darlings like Vampire Crawlers, Sifu, and Little Kitty, Big City.

It’s an existential win for Apple as it makes inroads with more developers, but it begs a question that’s hard to answer: How many people are actually playing those games? Apple is famously guarded with its data, which makes it hard to tell how much its efforts are paying off. Back in July, GamesIndustry.biz reported that sales for premium mobile games were up 77% in 2025. That’s a major data point against the narrative that mobile audiences only play free-to-play games riddled with microtransactions. Oliver wouldn’t confirm if those figures exactly match what numbers Apple is seeing on its end, but he did hammer home the idea that there’s clear growth.

“We’ve seen incredible growth of games coming to the App Store, in general, with more premium games releasing on the App Store this year than last,” Oliver said. “While many of those are indies, we’re also seeing more console and PC franchises coming to mobile, as it is a burgeoning audience for those games. These seven games featured in Indie Games Week capture where gaming on iPhone and iPad is heading: incredible diversity and creativity with no compromises on quality.”

What’s drawing more players to premium games? Oliver believes that part of it is a generational shift: “For an entire generation of players, their very first gaming device wasn't a console or a PC, it was an iPhone with a touchscreen. These users embrace direct touch as their primary controller, making iPhone and iPad the ultimate canvas for indie innovation.”

As for the kinds of games players are gravitating to on the App Store, Oliver says that Apple is seeing success with cozy games, management sims, and roguelikes. He shouted out Balatro, Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire, and Bloons TD 6 as a few mobile success stories. More and more, players seem to be embracing mobile as a way to play a certain kind of game.

While Oliver sells the narrative with carefully worded precision, questions still linger around Apple’s wider gaming efforts. Continued investment in mixed reality gaming is uncertain given that Apple has reportedly cut down production of its Vision Pro headset due to underwhelming sales. And though Apple continues to court publishers and get games on iOS, we haven’t seen the full-throated support from major players like Capcom and Ubisoft in 2026 that was crucial to raising Apple’s gaming profile in 2023.

Then there’s the question of where Apple Arcade fits into everything. Despite premature predictions of its demise in 2019, the service is still regularly supporting original games. But with games like Vampire Crawlers going straight to the App Store rather than joining the subscription service’s catalog, it’s fair to wonder if Apple is laying the groundwork to transition away from the Arcade model. But Oliver signals that there’s no change happening; Apple is simply embracing that it has two distinct products with different audiences.

“We want to give developers a trusted place to reach users around the world, support them at each stage, and help them build successful businesses,” Oliver said. “To achieve that goal, we provide developers with flexible business model options. That means a breakthrough phenomenon like Balatro can thrive as a premium download, and it can also find a home as part of the Apple Arcade service. The important thing is that we give developers the flexibility to make the best choice for every game and players the freedom to play how they want.”

Regardless of what Apple’s gaming strategy looks like in the long-term, it would be unwise to underestimate its potential role in the market. Especially at a time when console hardware prices are ballooning due to an AI-induced RAM crisis, there’s reason to believe that more players could become more comfortable gaming on the iPhone or iPad they already own. Games like No Man’s Sky are as good of sales pitches as any for what Apple devices can support in 2026: “Technologies like Game Porting Toolkit 4, MetalFX, and our open-source Unity plug-ins dramatically cut the time, effort, and cost required for developers to bring PC and console games to Apple devices,” Oliver said.

To prove that to a wider audience who isn’t clued in to the tech, Apple will need to keep its momentum up and convince more developers to bring their games to Apple devices. Indie Games Week is a strong sales pitch for players and developers alike who have been slow to embrace the App Store as a viable home for premium games; now the trick is making sure that every week feels like Indie Games Week going forward.