Following Apple's courtroom defeat to Epic Games, as part of which the former can no longer collect fees on purchases made outside the App Store and restrict developers from directing users to external purchasing options, the tech giant has made a couple of out-of-character moves in what appears to be an attempt to offset its losses in the mobile game market caused by the ruling.
In just one week, a company that has never dabbled in video games before, preferring instead to collect its 30% cut without direct, hands-on involvement, purchased its first-ever game studio, RAC7, the two-person team behind Sneaky Sasquatch, and was reported to be planning the launch of a dedicated video game app, expected to come preinstalled on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV later this year.
Pondering what Apple's next move might be to maintain its dominance in the market is industry analyst and self-described "Video Games Professor" Joost van Dreunen, who suggested that the company could be eyeing a potential acquisition of Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity engine and Epic's biggest rival in the game development field.
In his latest write-up, van Dreunen predicts that Apple may eventually purchase Unity, the engine behind over 70% of mobile games, which was also fully integrated into Apple Vision Pro at launch. He argues that such a deal would allow Apple to block Unity from building its own direct-to-consumer infrastructure, eliminating a potential competitor, while also undercutting Epic by offering a fully integrated toolchain for mobile game development and monetization.
Additionally, van Dreunen notes that "payment providers like Xsolla present an additional threat to Apple in this context as they have made it part of their business model to enable game makers' direct-to-consumer initiatives," so offering content creators more options and investing in its ecosystem "would benefit both consumers and Apple."
As an added bonus, the analyst says, Unity is relatively cheap at the moment, with a market cap of about $8.9 billion, down from $56 billion at its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic – a drop in a bucket for Apple with its ~$3 trillion net worth. Even so, should the acquisition actually happen, it would be Apple's largest purchase in its history, surpassing the $3 billion acquirement of headphone maker Beats.
That said, I'd like to emphasize once again that this is not an insider report but rather a prediction made by an analyst – with even van Dreunen himself describing it as "spicy" – and as such should be seen as nothing more than a brain-scratching "What if?" scenario. At the time of writing, neither Apple nor Unity has responded to the prediction, leaving Apple's next move to maintain its position in the mobile gaming industry uncertain.