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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?
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.