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Does Apple Need a First Party Strategy to Successfully Compete in the Games Market?

JCreasy

JCreasy

Member
Does Apple need their own "Naughty Dog" to win the hearts and minds of gamers? Microsoft did it with Bungie back in the day (who ironically planned to ship Halo on the Mac before they were bought).

Apple's handheld gaming "initiative" has excelled further than anyone would have ever expected. But can they duplicate that success on home televisions?

I've been thinking about what Apple will do with games once it announces its all-in-one television. I'm one of those who believes we'll get a 4k display with the guts of Apple TV.

Pretty much everyone I know believes that games will be apart of their television strategy. Their recent announcement about the game controller api shipping with iOS 7 seems to cement that idea further.

I can see the free-to-play market thriving in this ecosystem. Games like Warframe and Blacklight: Retribution demonstrate that beautiful core games don't necessarily need a publisher. And if those games are promoted on my Apple Television interface, one button press away from playing, do I really need to select over to hdmi 1 to get my gaming fix on a console?

But does Apple need exclusive games for this strategy to work? I know they're not content creators, but is this one space where they might consider switching things up. Even Steve saw the value of content creation when he got involved with Pixar. I was curious to see what you guys think . . .
 
Honestly, I don't think so. They seem happy getting their cut of all sales that pass through their system, and it's worked out extremely well for them.
 
AHA-Lambda said:
Honestly, I don't think so. They seem happy getting their cut of all sales that pass through their system, and it's worked out extremely well for them.
Click to expand...

actually they've said numerous times that the 30% revenue from the App Store pales to what they see in profit from hardware.

The dirty secret of itunes (and now app store) is that as far as apple is concerned, they're both just there to sell the hardware.
 
Apple is already massively successful in gaming. Consider that the iOS market is estimated to be $17+billion this year and the top sales category is gaming by a significant margin. And Apple gets 30% of that.

And all that money is just gravy to Apple. They operated iTunes and the App Store for years without making much profit, because it is such a selling point for their hardware.
 
They already rank in literally billions of dollars due to their 30% app store cut.

Without doing anything other than setting up the store, setting up game center to track achievements, and now with iOS 7 adding in controller API.

They make no games themselves and make billions off the game industry. They don't need to change anything. They are more than happy to rank in the $$ from angry birds, cut the rope, etc rather than going after the GAF demographic.
 
Apple and Samsung will shock everyone and make a console together. They will then use their mountains of cash to buy everything.
 
hwy_61 said:
And they need to convince Devs to use said controller. Otherwise, they'll never get the attention of gamers who hate touch controls.
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to those mentioning a controller, iOS7 has two controllers available in the API (a SNES controller and a dual analog controller).

as for convincing devs to use them.. apple has never had to convince devs of doing anything..

however apple has made it mandatory that games not REQUIRE a controller.. any game not playable on a stock device will be rejected from the app store.

of course nothing is stopping a dev from releasing a barely playable virtual stick scheme while supporting a flawless dualshock scheme. of course users/players may not enjoy it..
 
Apple doesn't NEED to do a thing. There are billions of app downloads and a lot of those are games. Not a single one, save for an ill fated poker app were apple developed. This ecosystem if it exists on the Apple TV will likely thrive through third party support.
 
What Apple needs to do, first and foremost, is revamp the App Store so that you don't just have top 100 lists of apps (generally ranked by revenue or by # of downloads). The discoverability of an app right now does not necessarily have anything to do with its quality.

Apple needs to improve their store so that actual high-quality apps rise to the top of the heap. Right now it's too easy for shitty apps to do well by people who game the price (for example, making a game 99 cents at release so that it shoots up the charts, then pricing it at $4.99 a week later, then rising up the revenue boards).

Right now it's hard to take *any* mobile-device app store seriously because they're poorly curated. You've got to dig through a bunch of shit to find the good stuff, and a bunch of serious gems get absolutely lost and ignored. But that applies to apps that aren't games also - it's just the gaming space is one where the store is especially full of shitty-but-popular apps.

If there were anyone that would make a good match for Apple as a first-party game developer, though, it'd probably be thatgamecompany (critically acclaimed and artistically beautiful games relying on minimalist types of input).
 
borghe said:
to those mentioning a controller, iOS7 has two controllers available in the API (a SNES controller and a dual analog controller).

as for convincing devs to use them.. apple has never had to convince devs of doing anything..

however apple has made it mandatory that games not REQUIRE a controller.. any game not playable on a stock device will be rejected from the app store.

of course nothing is stopping a dev from releasing a barely playable virtual stick scheme while supporting a flawless dualshock scheme. of course users/players may not enjoy it..
Click to expand...

Does it usually say on a games page in the App Store if gamepads are supported? I wonder if that's something that will happen after iOS 7 is out.
 
borghe said:
actually they've said numerous times that the 30% revenue from the App Store pales to what they see in profit from hardware.

The dirty secret of itunes (and now app store) is that as far as apple is concerned, they're both just there to sell the hardware.
Click to expand...

Oh fair enough then, this just shows that Apple don't care about games at all, the iTunes/App Store ecosystem is just there to drive sales of iOS devices.
 
AHA-Lambda said:
Oh fair enough then, this just shows that Apple don't care about games at all, the iTunes/App Store ecosystem is just there to drive sales of iOS devices.
Click to expand...
That's like saying Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo don't care about hardware at all, the consoles are just there to drive sales of games.
 
they're very successful as it is today.

there's no reason for Apple to even bother to create 1st party games.

iOS is the land of F2P, quick games that kill time.

the iOS user base is massive. absolutely massive. what they're doing now works. take a cut from those who sell to their user base.
 
iOS 7 controller API might be what Apple just needed to increase their presence in the convoluted gaming world. I'm carefully spectating.
 
richiek said:
Apple should buy Nintendo if they want first party exclusives.
Click to expand...

They shouldn't buy them, but the smart thing to do would be to partner up together. Let Nintendo have input on what needs to be in an Apple TV while Apple pretty much designs the interface and such.
 
PC does fine without 3rd parties.

EA said they will continue to release most games on the 360/PS3 consoles for the next two years. Apple's GPU in the iPad 4 is capable of 76.8 GFLOPS. If the A8X processor has 4x the capability (possible), that gives us 153.6 GLOPS. The PS3's RSX GPU can do 172 GLOPS.

If Apple wants to compete in the console market, they might be able to increase the clock speed of the A8X in the 2015 Apple TV with better cooling than the slim iPad has available.

Maybe EA starts to release AAA games for the 2015 Apple TV?
 
Buddha Beam said:
They shouldn't buy them, but the smart thing to do would be to partner up together. Let Nintendo have input on what needs to be in an Apple TV while Apple pretty much designs the interface and such.
Click to expand...

If all Nintendo had was the Wii U, I might agree with you... but Nintendo's handheld market makes me doubt they'd want to go 3rd party this generation.
 
Doffen said:
Apple got a huge developer fan base, they will get exclusives without asking for it.
Click to expand...

See this is what I'm arriving at.

I remember seeing Infinity Blade for the first time. That demo convinced me to upgrade my iPhone, even though I didn't need to and I wasn't due for an upgrade. I think games could help sell Apple TVs this way.

People with HD TVs will need to be convinced that Apple's new product is a must-have. Amazing, exclusive games is one way to do that. The question is, does Apple feel the same way?
 
I think Apple has attracted a decent number of high profile developers and don't need to be a first party developer themselves.

There's a decent amount of good quality titles, but for me, the limiting factor to make iOS a great gaming platform is in it's control scheme. Some games are tailored to physical controls while others are developed to be touch intuitive. I only hope that the rumored physical controllers come to fruition, it could only enhance the ability for iOS to become more of a gaming system for me. I can only dream of someone creating something similar in form to the Wii U controller that the iPad Mini could slot into.

But this is getting slightly off topic. Long story short, I think iOS can be successful based on third party alone.
 
Chrisness said:
If all Nintendo had was the Wii U, I might agree with you... but Nintendo's handheld market makes me doubt they'd want to go 3rd party this generation.
Click to expand...

I see it as less "going third party" and more "not manufacturing their next consoles". Doesn't mean they'd also be making games for MS and Sony's boxes or even Android... only that the next Nintendo console and Apple device are one in the same.
 
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