Yesterday Apple revealed the top Apple Arcade downloads of the year, alongside its top charts for iPhone apps and non-Arcade games. The most popular Arcade titles seem to point to a surprisingly thriving service five years after its launch.
Top 10 most downloaded Arcade games in the US
Apple has released region-specific top charts lists for Apple Arcade, but here are the top downloaded titles in the US in 2024.
- NBA 2K24 Arcade Edition
- Snake.io+
- Hello Kitty Island Adventure
- Sneaky Sasquatch
- Bloons TD 6+
- Sonic Dream Team
- NFL Retro Bowl ‘25
- Disney Dreamlight Valley
- Cooking Mama: Cuisine!
- Solitaire by MobilityWare+
You can view the full list of top downloaded games here, which includes many more titles.
2024’s winners were new releases with strong reviews
I’ll confess that I’m not a huge Apple Arcade user.
I’m a subscriber through Apple One, and enjoyed the service a lot in its early days, but in the past year or two it’s mostly fallen off my radar.
So I was curious what the top games list might tell me about whether that’s a broader trend or not.
While we don’t have download numbers for any of these titles, I was especially curious about one thing: are the top games of 2024 new releases, or old classics?
Essentially, I wanted to know if Apple Arcade had a thriving game ecosystem or not.
And the answer surprised me.
Out of the top 10 titles, seven out of ten were released in roughly the past year. Only three are older games that continue to be popular on the service.
If you look at just the top eight, seven of them are newer titles, with the sole exception being the increasingly resilient Sneaky Sasquatch.
You can interpret that data however you’d like, but I think it points to:
- a healthy, engaged user base for Apple Arcade
- plus developer efforts that are being rewarded as new games find success
If you want to consider another key data point—customer reviews—the top 10 titles are strong there too.
Here’s a breakdown of the current star rating for the 10 most popular Arcade titles:
- three have a 4.9 star rating
- another three boast a 4.8 rating
- the remaining four titles are 4.7, two with 4.6, and one 4.0
So Apple Arcade has lots of new titles that are connecting with users, and they seem to be really good games too.
Apple Arcade top games: wrap-up
Overall, I was encouraged by what I saw with Apple Arcade’s most popular 2024 titles. Even though the service hasn’t been especially popular with me, it’s clear that Apple has something good going on even five years after Arcade’s launch.
What’s your take on the top Arcade games? How do you feel about the service overall? Let us know in the comments.
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