I feel like the reason their speakers don’t take off is because for most, you will need two to get good sound and at $300+ each it is a hard sell for many, especially with them not having Bluetooth and the woes that come with Siri. A soundbar could do the job of the speakers + the Apple TV (and could incorporate hdmi in/eArc so it doesn’t rely on Airplay which can be finicky.
I get where you are coming from....
But integrating ATV into just one soundbar isnt going to solve much.
There are so many bars even from the same manufacturer.
And I've bought a number of them over the years.
Each has strengths and weaknesses and different sound profiles.
Audio purists still loathe the soundbar approach but convenience outweighs sound for many people.
And home environments are different to showrooms.
The public largely see a plug and play wireless subwoofer as about all they want to do.
Even adding separate rear speakers (even wireless) is too much of a stretch.
Hence we get all the audio trickery of bouncing made up signals off ceilings and calling it Atmos.
It can sound somewhat convincing at times.
Or at least pleasant with more feel than stereo.
Other times it can be a muddy mess with murky speech.
On top of that, Netflix audio is so bad on tvs people of all ages watch with subtitles.
With a good soundbar, it can sound good. But badly mixed audio is hard to improve later on.
Add in hearing perception and deafness and it's like the Holy Grail. You wont build a device that suits everyone.
AirPlay does have some issues.
But anything wireless will. But less wires makes for happier installs.
We've even seen Samsung release Atmos Wireless (which is lossy).
As always, audio has many standards and some will passionately argue which sounds best.
There was always a group who argued they could hear the difference between speaker cables that cost $100 a meter.
