I use to play games with my old remote. Sadly the new Siri one doesn’t work. Can’t park two controllers is it worth buying a games pad? What’s the best solution?
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Games on Apple TV
- Thread starter gadget123
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-Gonzo-
macrumors 68000
Best game controllers for Apple TV and Apple Arcade in 2026
The best game controllers for Apple TV bring a classic, console-like feel.
www.imore.com
Juicy Box
macrumors 604
Not sure what you mean by this.
For some games, yes. A controller would be better than the Siri Remote 1.
But, there are a few games that the Siri Remote 1 is actually better than using a controller.
I was concerned about getting the newest ATV4K2 just for the issue you have.
While I haven't done it yet, people claim that the older Siri Remote 1 will pair with the ATV4K2.
The trouble is getting one, as Apple doesn't sell them anymore. I found some reasonably priced on eBay.
I haven't gotten a new ATV4K2 yet, but when I do, I will get the older Siri Remote to use on it.
Juicy Box
macrumors 604
I use the SS Nimbus on my ATVs which has been great, but there was at least one game on Apple Arcade that I had issues with it.
When it launched, I played Castlevania with the Nimbus, but it didn't fully work. I can't remember exactly what the problem was, but I think I couldn't choose or use inventory items. Like, the button wasn't mapped.
I am not sure if this was the case with all controllers or just the Nimbus. The problem may have been fixed, as I haven't played it on months.
Another issue with the Nimbus (or all controllers) was with Real Racing 3. I minor issue, but I needed the Siri Remote to start the game. Like a prompt would pop up, saying that the game needs to add additional resources, and the Nimbus wouldn't work to click the download button. But the Siri Remote did.
After that, the game played fine right from the controller.
When it launched, I played Castlevania with the Nimbus, but it didn't fully work. I can't remember exactly what the problem was, but I think I couldn't choose or use inventory items. Like, the button wasn't mapped.
I am not sure if this was the case with all controllers or just the Nimbus. The problem may have been fixed, as I haven't played it on months.
Another issue with the Nimbus (or all controllers) was with Real Racing 3. I minor issue, but I needed the Siri Remote to start the game. Like a prompt would pop up, saying that the game needs to add additional resources, and the Nimbus wouldn't work to click the download button. But the Siri Remote did.
After that, the game played fine right from the controller.
Yes a controller would be good but I mean you can’t pair two controllers to one Apple TV I have the older model still too. I liked the remote for ten pin bowling where a as a controller won’t work for this game. The old remote gave a Nintendo Wii experience.
I have the HD model older one and newer one little difference other than the remote.
-Gonzo-
macrumors 68000
Yes you can, ATV4K & ATV4/HD supports up to 4 Bluetooth controllers.
Unless you’re also using Bluetooth for audio then it only allows one controller.
-Gonzo-
macrumors 68000
Bluetooth settings and check the paired devices.
Connect a wireless game controller to your Apple device - Apple Support
Connect a wireless Xbox, PlayStation, or other Bluetooth game controller to your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, or Apple Vision Pro.
-Gonzo-
macrumors 68000
Barbareren
macrumors 6502a
Only one? 😜 Practically all of them, except maybe the simplest ones, have severe issues from my experience, and many are simply unplayable. It’s pathetic, really. The exact same games work perfectly on the iPhone or iPad. I’m only left with one game that I truly enjoy playing with my Xbox controller paired with the ATV and that’s Sonic Racing. But even that game has frustrating glitches and bugs, loss of sound and server connection problems, and hang-ups/freezes to the point where only a system restart will remedy the problem. It’s not the games themselves that are necessarily bad, it’s just the Apple TV implementation that’s embarrassingly bad. They’ve had years and I haven’t seen any sign of improvement whatsoever, so I think it’s safe to say that the ATV will never provide even a decent casual gaming experience, sadly.
DaveSanDiego
macrumors member
No you cannot pair TWO Siri ATV remotes , but you CAN pair 1 Siri and One Gamepad or Two Gamepads, assuming the app in question is set up to do this. As as developer I have successfully tested all those combinations
George Dawes
Suspended
So they bring new box and remote out rumours of another one coming too and no way to play games without a game pad. I may look to buy a Nintendo switch as they have a sports bowling game now is that a better option?
Tesla1856
macrumors regular
Another one ... already? I guess that would be Gen-7 ?
The family and I love playing Asphalt-8 on our Apple-TV HD (Gen 4) and displayed on the projector. The gyro in the Siri remote works perfectly for racing cars.
I was excited to hear about 2021's Gen-6 UNTIL I found out that Apple removed the gyro. So, I picked up a new-in-box (but heavily discounted) Apple-TV 4K (Gen 5) from OWC. That will be my last one for a while. Looks like Apple is getting out of the gaming-market anyway.
Yeah, we also have a Sony PS4 Pro but we really don't care for it. It's mainly the slow load-times and the DS4 controller. We play most games a high-end Windows gaming computers (with keyboards and mice) ... like WoW and Fallout-76.
Juicy Box
macrumors 604
The raw graphics capability of the A10X in the 2017 ATV4K1 is almost three times the performance of the PS3 and Xbox 360.
The current 2021 ATV4K2 with the A12 is actually less powerful when it comes to raw graphics performance than the older 2017 ATV4K1 with the A10X, making it less desirable for gaming.
There are benefits of the ATV4K2 over the ATV4K1 when it comes to streaming content, but the older one has an edge for gaming in terms of the graphics capability.
I heard this a couple time. Is there an article or something that demonstrates this? I went looking and everything I find that did GPU specific benchmarks tend to end similar to this...
Graphics Card Comparison - Head 2 Head
Apple A12 Bionic GPU vs Apple A10X Fusion GPU / PowerVR - Benchmarks, Tests and Comparisons
Juicy Box
macrumors 604
The problem with direct ATV comparisons, is that there isn't really much interest in the Apple TVs, especially for gaming. So, that means there isn't much interest in doing side by side comparisons, so to compare the performance difference in the chips for benchmarks, you have to use other devices that have those chips.
If you look at the Geekbench 5 Metal test results, the A10X is 30% higher over the A12 for the GPU:
iOS Benchmarks - Geekbench
browser.geekbench.com
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the A10X is always faster than the A12, as if there is SW that is better optimized for the A12 than the A10X, the results would probably not be too dramatically different.
That said, I have seen posts on MR forum from game developers saying that the A12 is significantly slower for graphics than the A10X in real world testing. This posts could have been faked of course, but when we lack any actually data showing one way or another, we can only take people at their word.
There has also been a posts of people complaining about gaming performance on the new ATV4K2 with the A12 on some Apple Arcade games, including slowdowns and framerate drops during fast action games, such as Asphalt 8+. These issues are not present with the older ATV4K1 with the A10X.
Again, not really a scientific test, though.
There is a YouTube channel that is all about gaming on Apple devices. MrMacRight:
MrMacRight
Official MrMacRight YouTube Channel - The best place to find Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV Games! Inquires - mrmacrightmail [at] gmail [dot] com Tech suppor...
www.youtube.com
This guy is one of the few people out there that does pretty good gaming reviews on all Apple devices, including the ATVs. He also compares game performance on AS Macs vs Intels, native games, as well as emulated, Rosetta, Crossover, and Parallels.
When the ATV4K2 was launched, he posted a video showing the actual fps of some of the tvOS gamings running on the A12. He said if the video was popular, he was going to do a full comparison between the ATV4, ATV4K1, and ATV4K2, but sadly, he only got a fraction of views on that video that he does with his others, so it looks like he is not going to do the comparison.
During that video and some other newer ones, he did make a few comments basically saying that he see no improvement of the A12 over the A10X, and a few, I think Oceanhorn 2, there was a decrease in performance when there was a lot of enemies on the screen.
Both seem to be consistently better than the A8 in the ATV4.
The guys at Max Tech said that they were going to do a comparison between the A10X and A12 in the ATVs if there was interest, but sadly, it looks like it still hasn't happened.
Barbareren
macrumors 6502a
This would explain why I can play Asphalt 8+ on my ATV4K1 and NOT on my brand new ATV4K2! FuxXing Apple 😡
EDIT: Sorry, I was mistaken. I decided to waste my time doing some extensive testing and comparisons between the two 4K models.
1) It is the Xbox controller that causes Asphalt 8+ to crash.
2) The graphics and everything else seems to run smoother on the newer model, at least to my naked eye.
So, from my very personal, and unscientific, testing I can't see how the older model is better for gaming, other than the fact that the older model has the remote with an accelerometer and gyroscope...
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Tesla1856
macrumors regular
Interesting.
So, you call it "Asphalt-8+" because they are keeping it alive thru updates and minor changes?
Yeah, (while not as much as before) we still love to race cars in Asphalt-8 ... but with the Siri remote it is very fun (for the whole family). We mainly play on a projector.
Barbareren
macrumors 6502a
I believe it’s called Asphalt 8+ or Asphalt 8: Airborne+ because it’s the version that’s exclusive to Apple Arcade, hence the plus sign…
Yes, it works with the old remote, but not with an Xbox controller (dunno about other game controllers).
Incidentally I also use my old Apple TV 4K with a projector, and sure, it’s still fun to play with that remote. However, on the newest ATV an external controller is needed.
EDIT: It does say ‘controller optional’, but I can’t imagine playing with the new remote…
EDIT2 (I really seem to be having an ‘off-day’ today lol): I forgot to mention that Asphalt 8+ crashes while using the Xbox controller on both the ATV4K1 and the ATV4K2 with around 20GB of available space left on the old one and around 10GB on the new one (I use the app Storage Analysis to see the amount of CPU and storage being used)…
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Tesla1856
macrumors regular
Oh really? I didn't even know there was a special version inside the Apple Arcade (we don't use the Arcade). Is it better that the regular Apple-TV version?
I'm guessing your cars and stuff don't transfer over. We have over 100 cars (many Max-Pro) and currently "rich" with lots of credits, tokens, etc. Yeah, we have spent real money on it over the years (we have been playing since 2016).
On their forums, funny how GameLoft used to treat the Apple-TV version and iOS version as the same, when we all know that iOS and tvOS are two separate OSes, with separate executables.
Like I said, we don't use XBox or similar controllers ... but have you tried getting it to work with a different game first? Then, delete the Asphalt-8: Airborne Plus app. Reboot the Apple-TV, then install a fresh copy. You cars and tokens should be "in the iCloud" and re-populate.
I'm guessing your cars and stuff don't transfer over. We have over 100 cars (many Max-Pro) and currently "rich" with lots of credits, tokens, etc. Yeah, we have spent real money on it over the years (we have been playing since 2016).
On their forums, funny how GameLoft used to treat the Apple-TV version and iOS version as the same, when we all know that iOS and tvOS are two separate OSes, with separate executables.
Like I said, we don't use XBox or similar controllers ... but have you tried getting it to work with a different game first? Then, delete the Asphalt-8: Airborne Plus app. Reboot the Apple-TV, then install a fresh copy. You cars and tokens should be "in the iCloud" and re-populate.
Barbareren
macrumors 6502a
Well, I think the main point of Apple Arcade is just that they have removed the in-app purchases and comerciales, for a monthly fee. Otherwise the games seem to be the same.
Yeah, I regularly play Sonic Racing with the Xbox controller, and I’ve tried several other games as well. Even though many of the games I’ve tried can be rather buggy, it’s just Asphalt 8 that’s just not playable at all. It might work for almost one whole race if I’m lucky, but usually it will just crash before I even get to that point… And yes, I’ve tried everything you mentioned several times. I even started completely fresh (lost all my progress). Like I wrote, the problem is with the Xbox controller and that particular game not working together (and yes, I’ve unpaired and repaired the controller as well).
Yeah, I regularly play Sonic Racing with the Xbox controller, and I’ve tried several other games as well. Even though many of the games I’ve tried can be rather buggy, it’s just Asphalt 8 that’s just not playable at all. It might work for almost one whole race if I’m lucky, but usually it will just crash before I even get to that point… And yes, I’ve tried everything you mentioned several times. I even started completely fresh (lost all my progress). Like I wrote, the problem is with the Xbox controller and that particular game not working together (and yes, I’ve unpaired and repaired the controller as well).
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Tesla1856
macrumors regular
Sorry, just saw this message.
Asphalt-8 should play fine with only Siri-Remote attached. Anyway, you really want the Siri-Remote anyway as it has the gyro and you can use it like a steering-wheel.
Yes, a couple of times over all the years ... there was a bad patch/upgrade that corrupts the install. We had to delete it and re-install fresh. But you don't lose any cars, tokens, etc. Just restore your account from the cloud.