Apple put Football Manager 27 Touch on Apple Arcade on November 10, 2026, and set December 3 as the release date for four more games: Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, solitaire(ish), Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown+ and LEGO DUPLO Playtime. The announcement, published on Apple's Newsroom as the service's holiday lineup, restates the condition that separates Arcade from ad-funded mobile gaming. "Every game on Arcade is free of ads and in-app purchases, and one subscription covers a family of up to six," according to Apple. The US price is $6.99 a month, the same figure Apple printed when Football Manager 26 Touch arrived on the service in November 2025. Each of the three Apple One bundles that include Arcade now costs $2 more than it did then.

In Short

Apple added Football Manager 27 Touch to its Apple Arcade game subscription on November 10 and will add four more games, including Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown+, on December 3. Arcade games show no ads and sell nothing inside the game, so the time people spend in them sits outside the in-game advertising market that funds much of mobile gaming. The standalone price is still $6.99 a month for up to six family members, while the Apple One bundles that include Arcade went up by $2 each over the past year.

Football Manager returns for a second November

Sports Interactive's management simulation went live on Arcade the day Apple published the post. According to Apple, "An elevated Match Engine offers ways to shape the action on the pitch, new Recruitment and Match Preparation tools make scouting and game plans easier to master, and a redesigned iPhone interface keeps everything within thumb's reach." The caption under the main image says the game features "the world's biggest leagues". It does not name them, and the post does not say how many leagues are licensed.

The timing repeats last year's. On October 7, 2025, Apple's Newsroom announced that Football Manager 26 Touch would return to Apple Arcade on November 4, 2025. A post on the Football Manager site dated that November 4 said FM26 Touch was live on Arcade across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, while a separate edition, Football Manager 26 Mobile, was available exclusively to Netflix members. One franchise, two subscription services, two builds for phones.

Football Manager 27 Touch joins five sports titles Apple lists as already on the service: NBA 2K27 Arcade Edition, Madden NFL 27 Arcade Edition, NFL Retro Bowl '27, PGA TOUR Pro Golf and Retro Bowl College+. Two of them carry the Arcade Edition label. The post gives no information on how many people play any of them.

Four games on December 3

Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, developed by PopCap Studios, brings back the original tower defence game. Apple says it adds new levels, new modes, and local co-op and player-versus-player play on a single device, plus a Party mode that is exclusive to Arcade. The game itself is not new to the market. PopCap announced Replanted in July 2025 for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC at $19.99, with an October 23 release, according to Gematsu. December brings it into the Arcade catalogue, where the same game is covered by the subscription.

solitaire(ish) comes from Playstack, which Apple identifies as the publisher of Balatro. Players build card stacks to hit rising score goals, collect rare perk cards and upgrade their decks from more than 150 special cards, according to Apple, with daily streaks and leaderboards on top. Apple's caption describes it as a combination of the classic card game with "strategic roguelike deck-building".

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown+ from Ubisoft is described as a definitive edition that ships with all downloadable content, including the Mask of Darkness story expansion, along with new challenges, quests and cosmetic updates. The action game is set in the "interconnected, time-warped depths of Mount Qaf", in Apple's words. Ubisoft first released The Lost Crown on iOS and Android on April 14, 2025, with a free trial covering the game's introduction and a launch discount that ran until May 5, according to Ubisoft. The Arcade edition is therefore a second route to the same game on iPhone. Bundling every expansion into the package fits a catalogue in which nothing can be bought once the game is installed.

LEGO DUPLO Playtime, from early learning developer StoryToys, closes the December list. Apple calls it "a calm, open-ended digital toy chest" in which young children mix and match DUPLO bricks to build characters and a playground of their own.

What no ads and no purchases take out of the market

The sentence about advertising is the part of the announcement that matters most outside gaming. In-app purchases and advertising are the two revenue lines behind the freemium model in mobile games, in which a free download is paid for later, through spending inside the game or through ads shown between levels. Arcade removes both. Players pay Apple a subscription; according to the post, nothing else is sold and no ads are shown.

That places Arcade on the opposite side of a market PPC Land has followed closely this autumn. AppLovin, which sells ads that run inside mobile games and apps, reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $2.18 billion, up 55%, after new advertising models lifted spending by mobile game developers. Roblox chief executive David Baszucki told analysts on October 29 that more developers are paying to buy traffic on the platform. And on the web, Nitro's first benchmark report found that browser games generated 9.7% of its network's earnings on 4.1% of its sessions. Game makers appear as buyers of advertising in the first two cases and as sellers of it in the third.

An Arcade session offers neither side anything. There is no banner, no interstitial and no rewarded video to sell, and players inside the catalogue cannot be reached with in-game ads at all. How many players is that? Apple does not say. The post contains no subscriber count, no engagement figures and no revenue for the service, and Apple's quarterly results report Services as a single line without breaking Arcade out.

Apple itself is not an ad-free company. In December 2025 it said it would add more ad placements to App Store search results in 2026, and the additional positions began rolling out on March 3, 2026, in the UK first and then Japan, with the remaining Apple Ads markets to follow by the end of that month. On November 2, chief financial officer Kevan Parekh said advertising had set an all-time revenue record in the September quarter, when Services revenue rose to $31.6 billion. Apple gave no dollar figure for advertising. The same company sells ad positions in App Store search results and runs a game catalogue in which no ad may appear.

The price that did not move

The pricing section of Apple's post is short. Apple Arcade costs $6.99 a month in the US with a one-month free trial. Buyers of a new iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV receive three months free. A footnote limits that offer to new subscribers, allows one subscription per Family Sharing group, says the offer is good for three months after the eligible device is activated, and notes that the plan renews automatically until cancelled.

Arcade is also part of Apple One, at $21.95 a month for Individual, $27.95 for Family and $39.95 for Premier, each with a one-month free trial. A second footnote says that trial covers only services not already used through a trial or a subscription.

Apple's October 7, 2025 post about Football Manager 26 Touch carried the same pricing block, which makes the comparison direct.

Plan (US, monthly) October 7, 2025 post November 10, 2026 post Change
Apple Arcade $6.99 $6.99 none
Apple One Individual $19.95 $21.95 +$2.00 (10.0%)
Apple One Family $25.95 $27.95 +$2.00 (7.7%)
Apple One Premier $37.95 $39.95 +$2.00 (5.3%)

Percentages are PPC Land's calculations. Both posts also describe a catalogue of "200+ games", so Apple's own wording gives no measure of how much the library has grown in the 13 months between them.

The bundle increases arrived in two steps. TidBITS reported on July 20, 2026 that Apple One Family and Premier had risen by $2, alongside higher Apple Music prices that took the individual plan from $10.99 to $11.99. On August 28, 2026, Apple raised Apple One Individual from $19.95 to $21.95 and its Apple TV streaming service from $12.99 to $14.99 a month, according to Daring Fireball, with the new prices applying to new subscribers immediately. That followed an August 2025 increase in Apple TV+ from $9.99 to $12.99. Over roughly a year, Apple's video subscription rose 50%, by PPC Land's calculation. Its game subscription did not change. Arcade's last price change came in October 2023, when it went from $4.99 to $6.99, according to AppleInsider.

Spread across a full family, the $6.99 fee works out to about $1.17 per person a month. That is a PPC Land calculation and assumes all six places in the group are used.

Arcade as part of something else

The numbers point to a service that increasingly reaches people through other purchases. Apple One is one route. iCloud+ is another: on the November 2 call, Apple said iCloud+ plans now include Apple TV and Apple Arcade in more than 100 countries and regions. New hardware is a third. The three free months apply to every new iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, a range that this autumn includes the $1,999 iPhone Duo and an Apple TV 4K that now costs $299. Apple framed the whole lineup around the holiday season.

How many of those trial users go on to pay? Apple publishes nothing on conversion, and without that figure the service's churn, the share of subscribers who cancel, cannot be measured from outside. Nor does the post say what share of Arcade players pay $6.99 directly rather than receiving the service through a bundle.

App Store economics add a further layer. In a third-party free-to-play game, Apple's revenue comes from a commission on purchases made inside the app. In Arcade there are no such purchases, Apple collects the subscription, and the post says nothing about how developers are paid for the games in the catalogue. This autumn Apple has also added subscription tools for other developers, including retention messages that let apps offer discounts to subscribers who try to cancel. Its own game subscription, by contrast, is presented with a fixed price, a family plan and free months tied to hardware.

What the announcement leaves out

Several details a developer, an advertiser or an analyst would need are missing from the post.

It does not say which of the five new titles are Arcade Originals and which are App Store Greats. The distinction affects where they can be played: according to Apple, Arcade Originals run on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro, while App Store Greats are available on iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro only. A family that plays on a Mac or an Apple TV cannot tell from the post which of the December games will reach those screens.

It gives US prices only, and its availability note says that some content may not be available in all areas, without listing them.

And it says nothing about subscribers, revenue, retention, or the terms under which PopCap, Playstack, Ubisoft, StoryToys and Sports Interactive supply games to a catalogue that forbids both advertising and in-app purchases. Apple sells Arcade on what it excludes: no ads, no purchases, no interruptions. What it includes, in players and in dollars, remains undisclosed.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Apple, through its Apple Arcade game subscription, with games from Sports Interactive, PopCap Studios, Playstack, Ubisoft and StoryToys. The announcement affects Arcade subscribers, game developers that monetize through ads or in-app purchases, and advertisers that buy space inside mobile games.

What: Football Manager 27 Touch went live on Arcade, and four more games were scheduled: Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, solitaire(ish), Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown+ and LEGO DUPLO Playtime. Apple restated that every Arcade game is free of ads and in-app purchases and that one $6.99 monthly subscription covers up to six family members. Apple One tiers are listed at $21.95, $27.95 and $39.95, each $2 higher than in Apple's October 2025 post, while the Arcade price is unchanged.

When: Apple published the announcement on November 10, 2026, the day Football Manager 27 Touch became available. The four other games arrive on December 3, 2026.

Where: Apple Arcade on Apple devices. Arcade Originals run on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro; App Store Greats run on iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro. Prices are given for the US only, and some content is not available in all areas.

Why: For the marketing community, Arcade is a closed, ad-free part of mobile gaming at a time when in-game advertising is growing fast at companies such as AppLovin and Roblox, and when Apple is adding ad positions to App Store search. Apple keeps Arcade's standalone price flat while raising the bundles that carry it, and it distributes the service through Apple One, iCloud+ and free months with new devices. It discloses no subscriber, revenue or developer payment figures, so the size of the audience that sits outside in-game advertising cannot be measured.