If you haven’t already heard the news, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway investment firm recently pumped a bunch of money into ‘cash-strapped’ Apple. To say thanks for helping to keep the company afloat, Apple released its first iOS game since 2008: a Paperboy rip-off called Warren Buffet’s Paper Wizard that’s supposed to pay tribute to Buffet’s humble beginnings.
The game, which is available as a free download on the iTunes App Store, appears to have been delivered as part of a humorous video Apple created for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting held in Omaha, Nebraska, this past weekend.
According to CNN, in the video Buffet and Tim Cook are trying to come up with an idea for a new app, and the results are a game that plays somewhere between the Atari classic Paperboy, and iOS’s own Angry Birds — minus the replay value of both.
Warren Buffet’s Paper Wizard is actually only the second iOS game Apple has ever released, and although the company owns the copyright, it was apparently developed by another company called Wildlife Designs, which has no other releases on the iTunes App Store. It’s a game that was seemingly developed as a punch line for an event attended by wealthy investors, and it feels the part. But the timing is unfortunate because Apple has been a company that’s traditionally shunned gaming in the past, but also a company that has a gaming subscription service en route with over 100 exclusives.
In April, the Financial Times reported that Apple is spending $715 million on its new subscription gaming service. Hopefully, Paper Wizard isn’t indicative of what’s to come, or Apple Arcade could be the next Apple News+.