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CultOfMac:Why the new Apple TV will kill your Xbox or Playstation(hint:Motion ctrl)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
What if Nintendo is a first party Apple TV developer? Mind blown. Lol
McHuj
Member
Wouldn't be that unexpected, I believe iOS has the majority of market share in Japan and is close to half in NA.
chrisPjelly
Member
Ohhh boy. Even they manage to get more than what your typical "micro console" can get (a la just the Smartphone library), who exactly are they going to appeal to? It's not like the Apple crowd will want to ditch the convenience of their tablet/phone or spend any more attention/cash towards the type of game they wouldn't ever be interested in in the first place. If Apple wants to get serious about the type of gaming that we all associate with, then they have a loooong way before changing their store and the mindset of people who use their devices.
infiniteloop
Member
There's a ton of iOS games that look and play great on a big tv.
The reports say that Apple has no interest in that "type of gaming". They are targeting the more casual Wii type market that left gaming for mobile devices.
charlequin
Banned
Yep. Inasmuch as there was a spot for disruption in the home console market, Apple probably captured the biggest part of it just by making a device people were happy to sit on their couch with that didn't need to connect to the TV.
I just feel like the idea that this is a thing people want is goofy. People don't need new devices to watch Netflix with or to play casual games on. Apple straightforwardly can't compete with the biggest selling points of the main consoles (i.e. graphically beautiful games and competitive online multiplayer.) If the idea is that people are going to flock to this thing to play casual local multiplayer stuff (i.e. basically catch the Wii's lightning in a bottle again) then... lol.
The best case scenario is that the Apple TV, independent of gaming, is a success because people want it for Apple's cord-cutting service, but even if people are buying it for that, who's this audience that's really desperately looking to play games on their TV but doesn't already? Why would any of these people not just play games on their iPad?
The biggest difference here is that mobile gaming was Apple eating Nintendo's lunch, while this would be Apple eating... Apple's own lunch? Either they're disrupting X1/PS4 (and unlike with that mobile gaming situation, we have existing evidence that the strategy doesn't work) or they're disrupting casual gaming, which they already own completely.
Father_Brain
Banned
I think your skepticism isn't unreasonable, on the whole. But personally, I'm withholding judgment until I see what kind of experience Apple is offering, what kind of developer support they're getting, and how they're aiming to differentiate it from mobile gaming.
charlequin
Banned
And just to be clear, this isn't skepticism of Apple TV succeeding, or being used to play games; it's of it disrupting the existing market, because, again, everything that's left now was already disrupted by Apple.
eyeball_kid
Member
I've seen you make this remark about the Apple TV not being able to handle 'compeititve online multiplayer' a couple times now and I'm not sure where you're coming from. Is this a technical argument you're making? Or that you don't think studios would want to make anything in that genre for the TV? Or that Apple doesn't provide compelling friends/community features compared with Sony and MS? Or...?
charlequin
Banned
People who play Call of Duty have expectations of what goes along with that: friends lists, built-in voice chat, matchmaking, etc. If a platform doesn't support these on the level people are used to, they won't buy there, as we can see from systems like Wii U that technically support online multiplayer but have around a zero percent marketshare for the most popular type of shooters, etc. It is not possible for Apple to provide that with their current infrastructure, they'd have to spend a ton of time, money, and effort to build it. It's entirely possible, essentially, for Apple to compete with these systems by offering an alternate type of entertainment, but not by actually offering a direct replacement of the specific thing.
eyeball_kid
Member
Thanks for the clarification. I agree that it's missing most of those features the Game Center APIs aren't really geared for current-gen console social gaming. Though they've made some strides in iOS 9 with features like the game sharing API ReplayKit. But that's not to say they haven't already been working on a revamped Game Center, assuming they'd want to go after a more core gaming audience. I'm not quite sure they want to.
I don't think apple gives a shit about disrupting home gaming. They care much more about their box being the one box to run the with HomeKit, Siri etc (wow autocorrect, way to go on the capitalisation of your trademark 
)
Also possibly to counter android TV which seems the referred front end for smart TVs.
If that distracts some people from iPad gaming to Apple TV gaming, fine. They are still in the apple ecosystem.
Are ey going to finally add some decent user account support to iOS to support this, or w'll it be an incredibly personal experience that nobody Ithe rest of the house can use? The way I'd want to interact with Siri or Game Center or apps on a centralised Apple TV would be very different from on my personal phone. I'd also welcome multiuser support on iPad
)Also possibly to counter android TV which seems the referred front end for smart TVs.
If that distracts some people from iPad gaming to Apple TV gaming, fine. They are still in the apple ecosystem.
Are ey going to finally add some decent user account support to iOS to support this, or w'll it be an incredibly personal experience that nobody Ithe rest of the house can use? The way I'd want to interact with Siri or Game Center or apps on a centralised Apple TV would be very different from on my personal phone. I'd also welcome multiuser support on iPad
I really don't now how anyone can get a decent TV service these days with all the fragmented licensing deals between producers and countries. Netflix, hulu, HBO, man-and-his-dog are all fighting for the same content.
If they get anything resembling something complete-enough it will only be in the US. I can't wait for the day that producers just say fuck off to the TV stations and stream their content to their viewers directly.
charlequin
Banned
I have no idea why they would want to. It would be extremely expensive and they still (just by virtue of staffing subject matter knowledge) wouldn't be able to do as good a job without quite a few iterations.
jeff_rigby
Banned
My opinion is that we are looking at this backwards. Low latency hardware encoders are now in all dGPUs and APUs to support Video chat and the encoders in most do not use the GPU while all of the older smaller APU codec decoders do use the GPU (using a larger GPU for decoding uses too much power). Why don't encoders use the GPU? Everyone planned to support low latency game streaming right? If you are using the GPU for a game you can't use it to encode video for game streaming.
So game streaming be it in the home or over the internet has been in the works since before 2010 (See the Leaked Microsoft Xbox 720 roadmap). It's made possible because Video Chat will be a ubiquitous feature which is why Microsoft purchased Skype. We are now seeing the use of those encoders with Game Consoles first and with games because they don't require a common DRM for streaming. We will see video chat eventually replacing the landline phone but the standard for video chat requires encryption and a common DRM scheme between platforms. I believe ooVoo has been delayed waiting on DRM in the PS4.
With Vidipath and the FCC DSTAC replacement for the cable card as well as HbbTV 1.5, TNT 2.0 and ASTC 2.0's XTV; the Smart TV, Phones, Tablets and TV STBs with Playready support will become extremely common and since most can't support Game console AAA games; casual, WebGL and Playstation Now (Gaikai like game streaming) games of AAA titles will become more popular. Sony and Microsoft will support more casual games and we can see that for the last year or so and with Playstation Mobile.
Apple TV as speculated is only viable with IPTV streaming right. If they don't support Vidipath and sharing media in the home, they are targeting a near future landscape that all the Smart TVs and Vidipath STBs can also support but Vidipath platforms have an advantage given they support the Vidipath transition scheme where the Cable TV DVR is the gateway that converts RF channels to IPTV streams. Apple is apparently also betting on an internet that can support downloadable media vs. blu-ray disk distribution of media...this is also a near future possibility but with the 4K digital bridge, Sony and Microsoft have support for blu-ray disk distributed media till the Internet can handle 4K Ultraviolet without the consumer having to wait 4 to 8 hours for a download.
All the social features we see in the XB1 and PS4 can be supported by everyone provided they also have a dedicated codec encoder and decoder which most have to support required low power IPTV. Nvidia is now providing a SDK for a clone of the PS4 Share Play with AMD to follow. Nvidia has the Shield Game Console/ Android TV STB which already supports game streaming from Nvidia dGPUs on PCs.
Most Vidipath platforms support Bluetooth 4.1 or better and HTML5 W3C extensions for Game Controllers. Apple TV is apparently supporting the same so Games can be streamed Gakai like to Apple TV as they do follow that standard. The difference I see is no support for Playready= Vidipath and sharing media in the home with other platforms.
So game streaming be it in the home or over the internet has been in the works since before 2010 (See the Leaked Microsoft Xbox 720 roadmap). It's made possible because Video Chat will be a ubiquitous feature which is why Microsoft purchased Skype. We are now seeing the use of those encoders with Game Consoles first and with games because they don't require a common DRM for streaming. We will see video chat eventually replacing the landline phone but the standard for video chat requires encryption and a common DRM scheme between platforms. I believe ooVoo has been delayed waiting on DRM in the PS4.
With Vidipath and the FCC DSTAC replacement for the cable card as well as HbbTV 1.5, TNT 2.0 and ASTC 2.0's XTV; the Smart TV, Phones, Tablets and TV STBs with Playready support will become extremely common and since most can't support Game console AAA games; casual, WebGL and Playstation Now (Gaikai like game streaming) games of AAA titles will become more popular. Sony and Microsoft will support more casual games and we can see that for the last year or so and with Playstation Mobile.
Apple TV as speculated is only viable with IPTV streaming right. If they don't support Vidipath and sharing media in the home, they are targeting a near future landscape that all the Smart TVs and Vidipath STBs can also support but Vidipath platforms have an advantage given they support the Vidipath transition scheme where the Cable TV DVR is the gateway that converts RF channels to IPTV streams. Apple is apparently also betting on an internet that can support downloadable media vs. blu-ray disk distribution of media...this is also a near future possibility but with the 4K digital bridge, Sony and Microsoft have support for blu-ray disk distributed media till the Internet can handle 4K Ultraviolet without the consumer having to wait 4 to 8 hours for a download.
All the social features we see in the XB1 and PS4 can be supported by everyone provided they also have a dedicated codec encoder and decoder which most have to support required low power IPTV. Nvidia is now providing a SDK for a clone of the PS4 Share Play with AMD to follow. Nvidia has the Shield Game Console/ Android TV STB which already supports game streaming from Nvidia dGPUs on PCs.
Most Vidipath platforms support Bluetooth 4.1 or better and HTML5 W3C extensions for Game Controllers. Apple TV is apparently supporting the same so Games can be streamed Gakai like to Apple TV as they do follow that standard. The difference I see is no support for Playready= Vidipath and sharing media in the home with other platforms.
infiniteloop
Member
lighthouse777
Member
some dude on tv was talking about apple tv and how great its going to be to be able to tell your tv to go say espn etc.. you can talk to your tv and cut your cable etc
I lol
I lol
To be fair, Apple have actually done a fantastic job with Siri integration. I can see it working well in the new Apple TV.
cr_blah_blah
Member
RIP in peace home consoles
