WWDC 2023: App Store Regional Publishing Coming for Pre-Orders and Simultaneous Soft Launches

Ever since pre-registrations and pre-orders were a thing for mobile apps and games, we’ve had multiple situations where a game was up for pre-registration on Google Play but had no pre-orders on the App Store until closer to launch or not at all because of a soft launch in a country like Australia or New Zealand. This resulted in some publishers opting to release a game early in some regions or release a completely different build of a game early as a soft launch while having the “main" one be a pre-order. As revealed by a new WWDC 2023 session planned for June 8th, Apple is finally fixing pre-orders. The “What’s new in App Store pre-orders" session confirms that regional publishing is coming letting developers release a game/app as a soft launch in some regions while offering the same game/app as a pre-order in other regions.

This has been a long time coming, and I imagine most free to play game developers will be pleased with it. This can also let developers of games treat this new feature like a way to offer a product as an open beta for some countries while others wait for the full launch or once more testing is done. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out, and also to see what else Apple reveals over WWDC 2023 videos in the next few days. Check out all the WWDC 2023 videos currently available here. If you watched WWDC 2023, what do you think of all the announcements and software updates coming?