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Exciting possibilities about the gaming future of the Apple TV!

Mad Mac Maniac

Mad Mac Maniac

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 4, 2007
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A little bit of here and a little bit of there.
These articles shed some light on what Apple may be announcing this fall for the Apple TV.

http://stratechery.com/2014/apple-tv-might-disrupt-microsoft-sony/

The tl;dr of this article basically identifies the huge gaming market gap/opportunity that is left under the high price/high performance of the current consoles. Think what the iPhone is to the gameboy/psp market. And Apple is just in the right position to exploit it.

http://bigzaphod.tumblr.com/post/87823968514/apples-game

The tl;dr of this is basically how Apple can use metal and extensions in iOS 8 to play iPhone games natively on the Apple TV to create powerful gaming experiences with no lag.

One interesting note is how this could all be accomplished simply through a software update... which is exciting, but it also leaves me wondering why that wouldn't have been announced at WWDC? That would be the perfect venue to talk about such a thing... Maybe Apple chose to delay it either because it's not quite ready or because they already announced SO much for developers at WWDC and didn't want to completely overwhelm?
 
Mad Mac Maniac said:
The tl;dr of this article basically identifies the huge gaming market gap/opportunity that is left under the high price/high performance of the current consoles. Think what the iPhone is to the gameboy/psp market. And Apple is just in the right position to exploit it.
Click to expand...

My two cents.

Perhaps the biggest game related items in iOS 8 is Metal API. Metal API requires A7 processor or better (64-bit processor on iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini with retina display).

I suspect existing Apple TV models may not receive iOS 8 update in September, and instead, A7-equipped Apple TV model will debut with Metal API, App Store, and iOS 8.
 
I agree completely and can't wait to see what the future holds.

It started becoming obvious last year when they announced the MFi programme for controllers, that's one of the biggest hurdle any gaming on the ATV would have to overcome, that is, getting apps to support a non-touch interface. With the recent announcement regarding Metal, it's now even more obvious that there is a new world awaiting the (most wonderful) ATV.

Though they are taking their time, it appears they might even be solving the backward compatibility issue where older ATVs have neither the storage (to support downloading of apps from an app store) nor the A7 chips necessary to take advantage of Metal. It's really quite clever if/when they pull it off.
 
nutmac said:
My two cents.

Perhaps the biggest game related items in iOS 8 is Metal API. Metal API requires A7 processor or better (64-bit processor on iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini with retina display).

I suspect existing Apple TV models may not receive iOS 8 update in September, and instead, A7-equipped Apple TV model will debut with Metal API, App Store, and iOS 8.
Click to expand...

Oh, I didn't realize metal required the A7. That makes sense I suppose. However, it would be pretty awesome if Apple could turn on gaming for the tens of millions of Apple TV's already sitting in people's homes. That would absolutely blow people away (but considering how it houses the.. A4/A5?? chip, I'm sure it would have less than stellar graphics.)
 
I'm not convinced about the use of extensions to "Airplay" games on the AppleTV. If the game code is executing on the AppleTV, it needs the game assets and many iOS games are very large, >1GB. How is it going to handle them - download them in advance (long delay) or stream them (presumably requires significant code changes).

On the AppleTV in general: I do agree that an inexpensive console with a huge (virtually) pre-built library of free and inexpensive games has the potential to be massively disruptive. It would never replace the two bigger consoles, but it could take over from the original Wii as the casual gamer's device.
 
whooleytoo said:
It would never replace the two bigger consoles, but it could take over from the original Wii as the casual gamer's device.
Click to expand...

I would definitely agree with this (at least for the short term, predicting anything long term in tech is always a fools game). In fact, I think that Apple and Nintendo would make a tremendous team. I don't think Apple would ever care enough about gaming to actually buy Nintendo, but perhaps some sort of exclusive rights/profit sharing deal? If there is one company that Nintendo would allow to run their games I think it would be Apple (unless Nintendo fears Apple too much). The companies seem to have similar philosophies.
 
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