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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.
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.
I'm still waiting for them to make a good phone! *ZING!* :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ouya bombed because it was shit. They didn't DO anything, just rolled a bunch of half assed Android crap together and called it a console. No marketing. No Content. No developer push. Just a fucking kick starter and the idea that if you make something, shitty or not, magically people will follow your bandwagon because 'OMG Linux!@R!%@!@%!'
Then reality slapped them in the face. No one who buys the bottom of the barrel cheapest thing they can get ... then proceeds to buy games for it, even at $1.
And thats the end of Ouya. Crap hardware, crap software, and no fucking clue how their target market behaved. Linux fanboys don't spend money on Linux software, they expect it for free. No one else gives a crap that it was Linux so then it was just a POS to the rest of the world with no particularly redeeming qualities.
Ouya failed because it was a piece of shit, thats all.
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Apple iOS has a market share of 14% versus 83% Android, so there is no way they are the number one in mobile gaming. Perhaps in a parallel universe where Apple kept innovating, but not in this earth.
They do have the financial backing to push anything onto the market and get a decent 10% market share, that much is true. (Apple has been hoarding money for more than a decade.)
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."
Nobody buys an apple for gaming
There are an order of magnitude more games available for iOS than all gaming consoles ever invented put together. Thing is, the games tend to be a different "sort" of game than your typical console gamer wants. Is that a bad thing? The Wii sold far better than expected due to its "casual" nature, but eventually ran into a problem of underpowered-ness. Now we have a device with the graphical chops, brand recognition, relatively open App Store compared to other consoles, and a huge existing base of code easily ported. I think they have a shot, but don't see it as an either/or thing.
E pluribus unum
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.
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
Remember when you could "jailbreak" your iphone by just going to a website? You know "jailbreaking" the device is gaining full root access right?
Sure, xbox has the RROD and such... but Apple never had the newton and other total failures?
What happened with apple's previous console?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Remember when you could root somebodies Android by sending them a MSM? That was fucking last month, and still works on 90% of all Android phones.
Remember Ouya? Well, people can at least remember Pippin 2 decades later. Hardly anyone had even heard of the epitome of Android gaming.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
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.
The problem is that nobody wants a more locked-down game console. What we want is a more open one. Give it a games mode where it refuses to multitask or whatever, that's cool and seems obvious. But I don't want to be forced to acquire my games through an Apple store...
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1. How many of those Android devices are low end crappy phones with horrible GPU's that can hardly play Angry Birds.
2. iOS users spend a lot more than Android users on apps.
3. If you look at developed countries -- iOS is much higher. No one cares about selling apps to people who are buying $50 Android phones.