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How Apple Is Preventing the Apple TV From Becoming a Console Rival (redbull.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple's new set top box is on sale now, and has launched with several high profile games in the new tvOS App Store, including Guitar Hero Live and PS4 hit Transistor. However, as one writer points out, the Apple TV is still not an adequate console replacement, and it's not because of the graphics. Instead, several software issues and restrictions issued by Apple itself prevent developers from creating blockbuster exclusives for the platform, including the requirement that all games be playable using the bundled remote, lack of support for four players, and the 200MB initial app download limit. If these remain in place, can the Apple TV become a viable games platform, where the Ouya and PlayStation TV have failed before?
This presupposes that Apple even wants to be in the game console business. I think Microsoft is still in the red overall for the XBox franchise, and the Ooya is a stark reminder that nonportable microconsoles are of limited appeal. If all it lets you do is play the same games you can play on your phone why bother? Sure the screen is bigger, but the graphics aren't much better and you're monopolizing the TV.
I read the internet for the articles.
Seriously... is AppleTV being marketed as a video games console? No it isn't, nor has it ever been, at any point in time.
Complaining about how a (more or less) advanced media player can't compete against flagship console devices that were *designed* to play all these fancy schmancy games, is like complaining that Lamborghini's cars arn't capable of flight because they refuse to add wings and connect a propeller to it's powerful engine.
The Apple TV isn't marketed as a gaming console. It's advertised as a streaming box that also has games. The kind of simple whack-a-mole or platform-jumping games--the casual games. That is the same target audience with Nintendo's consoles. The iPhone/iPads are killing Nintendo's handheld devices, now the Apple TV is a threat to console too.
The serious gamers, who are willing to pay full price for AAA titles, will always want top-notch graphics. That means a gaming PC, a PS4 or an Xbox. As good as ARM processors are, they can't beat high-end dedicated graphic cards.
Sure the screen is bigger, but the graphics aren't much better and you're monopolizing the TV.
But sometimes you want to monopolize the TV because that's more comfortable than trying to fit two to four adult bodies around a 19 to 24 inch desktop PC monitor, especially in games where sharing a screen doesn't mean splitting it. The idea of OUYA was to put indie games on a screen big enough for more than one person. It failed as a product but succeeded in getting competitors such as Sony Computer Entertainment to open up more to indie companies.
They already offer the Nimbus Steel Series game controller as an AppleTV "Accessory" (even prominently showing it on the main AppleTV Product Page); so obviously, they don't have any illusions that the standard Siri Remote is going to be adequate for all games in all situations.
What they don't want to do, is to create entire categories of games that have NO WAY of playing with the Siri Remote.
As for the incremental download stuff, that is intended to avoid a frustrating wait (and unnecessary server load and download-cap teasing) while scene after scene, level after level, loads in, which most casual gamers won't even get to in that session.
On the other hand, they didn't want to price themselves out of the settop-box market, by making the AppleTV cost as much as a PS4 or XBox 1.
They made their engineering choices VERY wisely. This was NOT intended to be the next PS4/XBox. It was intended to be a Set Top Box that would let a couple of family-members play fairly nice games, but as only ONE of the types of uses, not in any way the central one, which is delivering streaming entertainment through your TV.
Sorry, everything doesn't have to do everything equally well. That's why our DVD Players don't make Toast. Or, more properly, why you CAN make Toast in a "Toaster Oven"; but most of them pretty well suck as Toasters, compared to the dedicated appliance for that function.