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Can We Trust Apple To Make a Good Games Console?
An anonymous reader writes: The Apple TV took center stage at the company's recent press event. It's getting its own operating system, better support for watching movies and listening to music, and full integration with Siri. All to be expected. But Apple is also pushing for the device to become a hub connecting mobile gaming with your TV. This article questions whether Apple has the chops to become a serious contender in living room gaming. Quoting: "[T]he subtext was clear: Apple thinks it can take on Nintendo for third place in the console market. The problem is, even while it's parading game developers on stage, it's still not clear if Apple actually wants to take on the console market. The inconsistency within the company when it comes to games is painful to see, and shows no sign of abating any time soon. ... The iPhone is the largest games store on the planet, and it's managed by a company whose attitude to the medium is 'go write a book.' That hasn't stopped magnificent art being made for Apple's platforms, but it has stopped some, such as Sweatshop HD, which was pulled from the app store in 2013."
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo?
There are so many stories about those three stuffing customers around, it's not even worth a citation.
It's far too late to try and introduce a new console to the market now, just look at the ouya.
Xbox, playstation, nintendo and PC have the market majority when it comes to games. Nobody buys an apple for gaming so what exactly do they plan on running on it? Mobile ports no doubt which, as history has shown, don't translate well when moved from a small touch screen to a large screen and controller.
Consoles just seem to have become a way for software companies to have even greater control of the customer.
Is iPhone a "good" gaming platform? I doubt anyone would rank it "good" on any objective measure, BUT millions of people play games like Candy Crush on it every day, simply because they have it on them and was bored.
The Apple TV remote have accelerometer and gyroscope, simple Wii style games is entirely possible. Rotate the remote control sideways and you have a simple controller, touchpad as directional pad and buttons in the middle. More complex games can be handled with Bluetooth keyboard and even a mouse/touchpad.
Would it be a "good" gaming platform? I doubt it, but I also won't doubt that many people will play games on it simply because it is there. If one can just switch over during the commercials to tend your virtual farm for 30 seconds and flip back, why not?
Oliver.
And I mean NO.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
See for yourself
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Remember the recent Slashdot article about the install sizes of every PS4 and Xbox One game? Remember how people were complaining that the default 500GB drives that those consoles come with aren't enough?
The Apple TV maxes out at 64GB of non-upgradable storage. You can't expand that with a USB hard drive. Even if you could, the maximum app size is 200MB.
As a games console, it's already dead in the water, and that ignores the lack of a proper controller or the fact that you can only ever use one remote control with it at a time.
Can We Trust Apple To Make a Good Games Console?
Is the wrong question to ask.
Can We Trust Apple Fanboys to Buy Whatever Apple's Next Product Is?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Latest gen is 2k not 4k while it's clear the competition and the market are releasing 4k units. That it can not store local movies as well is annoying. How many of us have kids who watch the same thing over and over and we watch our caps die a quick death?
Seems like they feature froze it in 2012.
Why do we need to trust them to do anything? Let the market decide: if it's an awful experience (see: Ouya), it either won't last or Apple will pour resources into trying to make it suck less -- which based on their track record is pretty much a coin toss.
Tangentially, why do people get so caught up in issues of "trust" and fanboidom with these things? If something sucks, let it suck. If it's awesome, partake.
"Trust Apple to make a good games console"? If they fail will they cause public harm? There will be an excess of blogs, podcasts, and newscasts giving their opinion before, during, and after rollout. If the reviews are good, buy one. Or not, I don't care.
I'm still waiting for them to make a good phone! *ZING!* :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
As long as I can tell Siri to watch my back in the game, I'm OK with it.
The game might suck, but it will be esthetic.
Apple tv sells, its been around for ages so theirs no failing their. Before it was locked off now it has a app store for open development, thats a win win. Apple not a gaming company their just aware of gaming. So they made some api's for developers to make & care about games. Its not about original content, its about wealth of content in this new market. Console market is original, fees, fees, fees, licening, disruption deals, etc. So their will always be consoles. But, triple A developers will keep nests in both camps. Cheap apps sale could fuel triple AAA title development for the public image it developes well taking tge edge of cost. And the reverse the quality of triple A titles could raise the bar for what the limited apple hardware can do. Though! All apple device are aligned graphicly so thats an interesting market for a game that support universal (apple tv, ipad's, iphone, ipod, etc) sorry angry birds comes to mind haha, kids will eat that up on the tv.
So apple makes decent hardware and keeps it aligned and developers make or break the future of apple tv gaming legacy.
Gamers have a particular attitude.
Apple fanboys have a particular attitude.
The two attitudes don't really intersect.
That isn't to say that there aren't Apple users who are also gamers, but they'll move to their console or reboot into Windows or (in rare cases) run a OS X port.
I'm sure the objective Slashdot hive mind will be as successful in their predictions for the Apple TV as they were for the original iPhone.
It's a market that already have a lot of competition and a very steep entry bar, that requires a lot of exclusive games to work, and publishers willing to do exclusve games and actually talented studios willing to sell are very, VERY hard to find.
Would you trust Apple to date your sister?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't own a "television" and don't have cable. Most flat screen displays sold have an HDMI input meaning they can be a "television" or a computer display. In 20 years, the idea of "television" being a separate and special device is going to be crazy.
...
...but this stupid idea of "televisions" is going to sound like dial-up modems, landline phones, pagers or a Palm pilot in the not so distant future.
So is not the real question whether or not phones and portable tablets will be able to be plugged into flat screen displays? Consoles --- to this point --- are still around because consoles offer a more user-friendly and no bullshit experience (drivers? viruses? operating system updates?) --- the mobile platforms have user-friendliness down pat.
Who really thinks there will be "set top boxes" like Roku or Apple TV in 20 years?
Maybe not tomorrow
1995 called, it wants its news back.
How is this a console war? This move is so far simply to keep you in their ecosystem. Like every vendor. How about we see what happens instead of launching a pre-judging flame-bait non-article?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If the rumors about the Wii U successor are true, it's going to usher in a huge flood of new marketshare for Android. Nintendo's internal studios are some of the best in the world and having them work for Android is going to be a major blow for iOS. In fact, it very well could be for Android and iOS what Final Fantasy 7 was between Sony and Nintendo. If the next Nintendo handheld also runs Android, the market is going to shift in a very bad direction for Apple, Microsoft and Sony in part because of the opportunities for Nintendo, but also because Nintendo will be able to replace their console very few years while saying "recycle the console, keep the games, nothing is obsolete anymore."
Apple's customers are retarded, so of course it will sell despite being a generation behind, technologically.
I watched the announcement and I don't remember any mention of other consoles, why you should buy an AppleTV over other consoles, or how games are better on an AppleTV versus other consoles. It was more 'You can already play cool games on your iPad and now you can play them on your TV! With friends! And motion control!"
At most, Apple may be going after the audience who bought a Wii as their first console because of the casual party and sports games. It's not competing with the PS4 or Xbox, instead it's picking up the casual gamers left behind when the Wii fizzled. Those people won't buy a PS4, but they'd get a cheap set-top box that displays their movies and photos and now also let's them play motion-controlled bowling with friends. Yes, they're also offering combat games like Warhammer, but it's still aimed at people who are happy playing combat games on iPads, not Xboxes.
I just don't see the AppleTV being marketed as a gaming platform, it's an entertainment center that has games as one of its features. If you're more than a casual gamer, you'll play most games on your desktop or have a PS4/Xbox on the shelf next to it.
When Apple comes out with their console it will be "revolutionary" with features "never seen before". You may not believe it now but just wait and see what they tell us when they release it. ;-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
But I do know that it will be shiny and have only one button!
A Touchscreen as a remote control for something else means you are not looking at it
This makes them fairly useless for most games
Someday, we'll have touchscreens that can alter their shape, and give good tactile feedback - respond more like a button, or at least sem-solid gel-filled bump
but now, even using a touch screen for simple NES games on a separate bigscreen is a pain
can we trust apple?
no.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
But they will create a controller and pretend it's their invention.
Every game console created depends on content, i.e. compelling games.
That is what killed Apple Computer's Pippin back in the 90s [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin].
This is also the reason why Apple Inc.'s AppleTV will fail.
This is why, on top of the Sony network hacking troubles, that PlayStation 3 failed.
Remember Sega Saturn [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn]?
Pippin
It's up to companies making controllers and games.
But Apple hasn't made what they consider to be a games console - it's a home App Box. What you do with such a thing is up to you... It's actually got pretty exciting hacking potential since anyone will be able to develop apps for their own home for free now that there's not a $99 requirement for local device testing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, the AppleTV comes with max 64GB, but you got everything else wrong.
The maximum app size is *2GB* not 200 MB - and has been for some time. That's only for the initial download bundle...
What you are also missing is on-demand resources - you could have a game of infinite size that loaded levels on demand.
iOS can also unload less used resources in apps and re-load them later, so the 64GB is not as constraining as it first seems.
That said I don't think you will see as many texture-heavy monsters lie Bloodbourne on the AppleTV. But the point is, they could exist if someone wanted to make them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Can We Trust Apple To Make a Good Games Console?"
Sure look at the Apple watch...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Because it's not a game console first. It's a media streaming device that happens to have gaming capabilities.
any objective measure
Sony is a non-player in the handheld market. Sorry, PSP fans. Yes, I even own one. I've never seen another person in real life who does.
Nintendo is the only real player in the traditional console market there, and they're being massacred by mobile. Android and iPhone are both direct threats, to the point where Nintendo is actually moving things to these platforms.
So, yeah. I'd rate the iPhone as good. I'd rate Android as good, too. They're small, handheld platforms with decent battery life and a pretty damned decent amount of power. About the only 'gaming gimmick' they're actually missing is 3D, but 3D doesn't sell shit. People aren't buying the 3DS for 3D.
If someone could be trusted to take an existing class of device and turn it into a product that's everyone wants and that sets the design rules that everyone will copy for the next 10 years, it would be Apple.Usually they do things right that are so obvious that the existing designers didn't event know that they were doing something wrong as they simply took the current ways for granted.
I'm not the usual Apple fanboi. I well know that "Apple" or Jobs never invented jack. But I give them credit for being the ones that take existing devices and for some reason, to them right.
bickerdyke
I'm going to wait for the iConsole 2 to come out; it'll have more features and cost less.
Probably but it's not easy to compete with Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc.
In the U.S., code isn't speech, so while the assets may be "art," the software that drives them isn't. Sucks, yeah?
It's all about quickness of launching oneself directly into the gameplay. No vapid intros, no lengthy logos, just straight-to-game Nintendo's approach. That will be the breaker point for Apple's effort to enter the ArenA.
How about you go make a better one since you seem to know why iphones are not good.
Geeks through the ages have always predicted failure after failure of products because the products were not "good" enough, or as good as something the geeks wanted. For years computers sold almost exclusively on spec's. But the best personally computers early on were Atari and Amiga and commodore, yet, none of them are still around to any significant degree.
TVs sell on specs, game consoles sell on spec's, gaming PCs sell on specs. Everyone loves to brag about the "best". But, look at all the AAA games and they allow you to throttle down to low level PCS - because, only a very small market exists at the "real" gamers level. In all the years Xbox has been selling it is estimated that it has only sold about 75 million copies, many (most?) of those are now in closets. Same with Playstation and Nintendo. In just seven or eight years iPhone has sold 700 million devices - ten times as many. The iPhone sucks, the iPhone doesn't compete with the competition, etc. But, it keeps on selling. Early in the iPhones life it pushed ALL other digital camera's off the boards on photo websites - it sucked as a camera, but people used it. Apple TV SUCKS as a desktop box, no ability to records, or schedule viewing and until recently only 720p resolution, and yet, it keeps on selling.
I expect gaming on the new Apple TV will suck, it will not even be close to what a tricked out PC or console will be capable of doing - but, I predict that in 3 years it will OWN the new game market. Games by the big names will come out first on the Apple TV, then be release on PC's and consoles (if at all)...
Apple sucks, Apple is the devil, Apple is the new evil since M$ was cast out like IBM before it. But, Apple keeps growing, keeps owning more and more of the markets they go into, and most importantly, they make TONS of money doing it - unlike some other companies trying to compete with them. Sadly, that is the real meaning of "doing it right" - making money, not faster, bigger, or more FPS at higher resolution.
Based on Apples track record with the iPhone, if the new Apple TV sells, in 3 years it will be 20 times faster than today, it will support multi-screens and real time 3d at 4k resolution and 60 fps and will support most leading brands of joysticks and console controllers and have full 3d VR support builtin. It will support 7 channel surround sound or better, and it will still sell for around $200 (todays dollars) and AAA games on it will sell for around $20 with family sharing. And it will SUCK. In 3 years it will be releasing features geek have been getting for 2 years, and all we will hear about is how awful and behind the times AppleTV is, and no real gamers ever would be caught playing on it. Meanwhile, 700 million Apple phone users will be buying the AppleTV so they can "share" games between the phone when away from home and play on the TV when at home. Yeah, I know you can already do that with Android - and that is exactly my point. As much "Better" as android is, Apple still makes the most money doing it, and has an ever growing extremely loyal customer base. You can call them names, spend all your free time putting Apple customers down in forums across the internet, and Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank - being best means nothing if you file bankruptcy next year - that is life in the world we live in.
The PS3 wasn't a failure. Sure, the first couple of years it was considered a joke for being horribly expensive and notoriously hard to program, but it outsold the 360 everywhere but North America with global sales estimated at 85.83 Million to 360's 84.90 Million.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Seriously who actually gives a fuck. Can we trust? Really? Thats a fucking story on slashdot now? Who picks these stories? They need to visit actual human society more if they are injecting anthropomorphic trust in design of a game console and a multinational corporation.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
The PS3 WAS A FAILURE. It lost sony money a fortune, that is a failure in the business world. sales mean nothing if you aren't making money off it. Also VGChartz numbers are acknowledged as wrong. PS3 is still somewhat behind the Xbox as they have been undertracking the Xbox 360 for a number of years now.
by neoshroom on Wed May 29, 2013 09:17 AM (#43849329) Attached to: Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing from: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3795701&cid=43849329
...Until they release a TV with a kinect-like interface running iOS. And then Sony's PS4 and the Wii U crashes and burns, (which is sort of already happening...sales on the Wii U are very poor and Sony's electronics wing isn't doing well either), while everyone is playing Angry Birds on their new Apple TV platform and we get umpteen-million articles about the "New Console Wars," which are now between Microsoft and Apple.
I'm thinking about taking up a career in prophesy...
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Wasn't "Sweatshop HD" pulled in 2013... because the developer of it, "Littlecloud", went under in 2013?
In other words, this had more to do with no place to send the checks, than it had to do with Apple being "mean"?
Smart TVs tend to offer "Games"... and I use that term loosely. Some Smart TVs based on Android will give you access to the Play Store, but most are closed systems with about 20 'Apps', all made by the manufacturer.
I can see Apple trying to reinvent that space, rather than compete with actual "Gaming" hardware and software.
It will be the best they ever made!
I don't doubt many people will use it for streaming movies or TV content, or just Itunes music but it gets silly how many devices are made to do such a job. Imagine you're running a smart TV with a {DSL box or cable box}, a game console and perhaps a bluray player : you have four computer devices that claim you want to use them to stream stuff with!
Or play media from your own hard drive or network.
....2 years from now someone is going to release a game you really want that will require the 2nd generation "New AppleTV", and this will happen again every 2 years. Apple does not commit to single platforms for any serious length of time the way a console maker does. Also, the lack of a proper controller shows they don't really give a shit, they just want people to make apps that they can sell and take a cut of the profits from.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
And I am typing this on a Macbook Pro.
The minimum a console needs to get acceptance in the market is to play a couple popular games like Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Battlelfield, FIFA/PES. Even the WiiU supported some (well, Nintendo's different). An Apple TV hardware is FAR from doing it.
If Apple leveled the hardware to it, keeping their astronomical profit margin would be impossible without charging 800-900 USD. Remember: ALL consoles are sold at pratically no profit, some even lower than it's cost. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo make up for it with games.
Apple could very well do it, having the biggest application store in the world with a 30% cut of anything in it but, again, it's something they NEVER did before: to reduce the profit margin on hardware.
Console player do value their money. It's even the main point over the PC x Console wars.
news at 11
I'm sorry, but it's entirely possible that you're a moron.
Whether an Apple gaming console is any good or not is totally besides the point. If Apple builds and sells something, there are more than enought brainwashed idiots (AKA Apple disciples) standing in line on release date to buy it.
Look at the iWatch - A nice attempt to look cool, but everyone ignored the fact that current technology (even Apples) cannot deliver what a useable smartwatch would need. Still, they sold quite a lot of them, until the market reality cought up and finally found that the concept is bonkers from the very beginning.
So if Apple builds a gaming console, of course hoards of idiots will queue on release night just because its Apple, not because its a useable product. As with the iWatch, they will be disappointed shortly after, as CandyCrush on a TV will not be the thing that would drive a console market. The top games and game development companies are already tied to real consoles with an existing market and infrastructure, so Apple would have to start from scratch in a market that will fight any newcomer tooth and nail.
TL;DR: Apple does not live of phones or consoles, but on idiots with too much money. Quality or common sense have long ceased to be arguments here.