Apple Should have Taken on Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation with Apple TV

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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Back when Apple was first developing the Apple TV it was originally supposed to be an entire set top box replacement device, much like a TiVo but with apps. When this fell through, Business Insider reports, Apple briefly considered bundling the Apple TV with a game controller to take on Sony and Microsoft in the game arena. Business Insider argues this was a huge missed opportunity, especially since the majority of all apps sold for the Apple TV are games.

I don't know how well Apple would have taken on the already entrenched Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 in 2007 with a lightweight TV device, but then again, with the majority of "gaming" being titles like Farmville, Candy Crush and Bejeweled, who knows?

But Apple could have "disrupted" the console industry the same way it took over the mobile gaming world — by offering a limited version for cheaper, building up a large community of developers, and eventually directly challenging the established market as technology gets better and faster.
 
Never mind that Apple TV nonsense, WHERE'S MY SLI/CROSSFIRE SUPPORT ON IMACS!!!???? :vamp::vamp::vamp:
 
This is exactly what Nvidia is doing with the Nvidia Shield TV, which makes sense for them since they have a ton of expertise in gaming hardware and contacts in the gaming industry. They've even successfully ported a few console games to run natively on their device (Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Borderlands, and Resident Evil 5, for example) in additional to their game streaming service. Nvidia pulled this off by putting a pretty beefy GPU in their device, which the Apple TV doesn't have. I find it hard to believe they it could compete at a similar level unless Apple starts taking gaming hardware much more seriously.
 
Four years ago I had Angry Birds on a Roku 3. A couple of years after that, Game of Thrones on a FireTV. Games on the set-top box platform are a joke. There simply isn't enough power or memory to make the experience worth coming back to compared to tablets and consoles. (I'd lump the Nvidia shield products into the tablet category)
 
Ehh, I don't know. I think Apple was smart to have stayed out of the business and kept themselves separate. Seems like MS had a hard time balancing their software/game hardware business for awhile (and haven't fully rebounded imo).

I think a partnership with Nintendo could've been lucrative. They both have a similar xenophobic view of their respective marketplace, and I think a Nintendo Wii console with iTunes/App/Casual game support would've been even more massive than what the Wii ended up being. And it might've kept the momentum going for Nintendo/Apple to continue that success with their followup machines.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
But Apple could have "disrupted" the console industry the same way it took over the mobile gaming world — by offering a limited version for cheaper, building up a large community of developers, and eventually directly challenging the established market as technology gets better and faster.
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Not likely.

Throw in a more capable GPU, RAM/storage boost and a controller, all with typical Apple pricing, and it would have cost as much as an XB1/PS4. It would have flopped hard.
 
Yup, Apple wants the easy pickings, not the cut-throat console world. They're making a shit-ton more than Sony, so I*think they know what's more profitable.
 
Business Insider being edgy again.....they'll get it right eventually. I'm not holding my breathe though.

The AppleTV is for consuming media. You watch video content or listen to music. That's why people buy it. Of course games are going to be the most popular apps for it....are we supposed to use Pages or iMovie on it?!?!?? Games have simplistic inputs.

So this idea that it should play games is fak......opinionated news.

The reason it took off was because it was cheap (for Apple) and it does what it does really well. Nobody had a smooth Netflix interface like Apple did back then.

That being said, what he should have bitched about was the lack of 4K playback (and h265 by extension) as well as some sound issues. Although the 4K content thing is still a trap for hack journalism because iTunes does not have 4K content for sale this there is no reason, yet, for Apple to push 4K on the ATV.

We have 3 gen 3's in the house and one of them probably gets a hundred hours of use a week.
 
Thanks to Chromecasts my media needs are totally met. Video, audio, I got it all! Setup my own Emby, have content stream throughout the home. I have total control and it's way more affordable than Apple TV ever could be. Thanks to Emby my experience is also very rich!
 
Apple wants high profit, high cost content to be more common place.. This is their chance at success, because their wants are in line with content providers.
I kind of discount them off hand, but when I think about it, I should not.
If they ever are willing to sell things at a significant loss keep the hardware the highest end, I think their install base would grow tremendously, quickly.
I don't know if you currently can, but they should be willing to allow controlling the device with android phones for the games, and come with a controller on the cheap (just re-badge some blue tooth generic).

Only if their market penetration in massive they will capitalize, since I think they want content to cost more, so I think with a massive install base providers slowly but surely will more exclusively to appleTV.
This will be bad for all of us, that I know.
 
thenapalm said:
Sure, why not. We all remember how successful the Ouya was.
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Most of the games were bad phone ports and the games made where not very well optimised or were buggy as hell and many of the good games are available on better platforms like PC ring any bells.
 
shspvr said:
The only reason why it massive failure becuase the it cost like $600 vs all other which where selling for way less.
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And do you honestly expect an Apple branded console to be different in the overpriced vs specs?
 
Dan_D said:
I wouldn't worry about that until developers actually start making modern games that support SLI and Crossfire properly.
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Honestly, I haven't played anything multi-GPU since the Voodoo2 days that didn't suck.

Scanline Interleave worked great on the Voodoo2, but later SFR techniques scaled poorly, and AFR techniques came with one or more of all kinds of other problems, like increased input lag, high average framerates but terrible minimum framerates, jitter, lag, stutter incompatibility, etc. etc

Having first had dual Radeon HD6970's and later dual 980ti's, and having tested others multi-GPU systems before and after that, I don't feel like there are any glory days of multi-GPU to look back on, unless we go all the way back to Voodoo2.

It's just been a suck-fest ever since, regardless of whether the multiple GPU's are on the same video card or not.
 
Revdarian said:
And do you honestly expect an Apple branded console to be different in the overpriced vs specs?
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At time it was all ready $400 overpriced even the N64 was out sold it so there for was no point in it in fact I look at both at time and end up get N64 but that all change as soon the 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics come out for PC which won any way.
 
I have a psvita TV and actually its an impressie device for what it is, ESPECIALLY @40usd (or 70usd for bundle). A very tiny box that plays games at 720p or so <2W. Of course the vita died in large part because of those damn memory sticks and sony too.

The problem with these devices isn't the hardware, its the library of games available for them and ecosystem around them.
 
shspvr said:
At time it was all ready $400 overpriced even the N64 was out sold it so there for was no point in it in fact I look at both at time and end up get N64 but that all change as soon the 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics come out for PC which won any way.
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N64 was the first console I bought with my own money...I couldn't remember how much a spent all in getting the console and accessories, but remember it being in the $300-$400 range. So I googled N64 fliers and then I saw it. The assholes at Nintendo have been fucking with us for over 20 years!

OltR8Zi.jpg
 
thenapalm said:
Sure, why not. We all remember how successful the Ouya was.
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I actually bought (new) the white special edition one BECAUSE i knew it would be such a failure that it might be hard to get one in the future at a reasonable price. I put like 1 game on it just to see how it worked. Does it even connect to anything anymore? It would probably be more useful as an emulator.....but I do want to keep it functional for nostalgia reasons.
 
AppleTV lightweight did try to compete in that sphere at least a little.

Google search shows controllers made for that purpose.

Apple can't even get out of their own way with the AppleTV and I don't expect it to survive.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Honestly, I haven't played anything multi-GPU since the Voodoo2 days that didn't suck.

Scanline Interleave worked great on the Voodoo2, but later SFR techniques scaled poorly, and AFR techniques came with one or more of all kinds of other problems, like increased input lag, high average framerates but terrible minimum framerates, jitter, lag, stutter incompatibility, etc. etc

Having first had dual Radeon HD6970's and later dual 980ti's, and having tested others multi-GPU systems before and after that, I don't feel like there are any glory days of multi-GPU to look back on, unless we go all the way back to Voodoo2.

It's just been a suck-fest ever since, regardless of whether the multiple GPU's are on the same video card or not.
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So, would you agree then, that a new iMac these days with a single AMD GPU with 4GB of memory is sufficient to play some pc games via Bootcamp? It sounds like you are saying a multiple GPU setup these days in a PC (2 or 3) aren't worth paying the money for the extra GPU's... Or am I missing your point?
 
fairlane said:
So, would you agree then, that a new iMac these days with a single AMD GPU with 4GB of memory is sufficient to play some pc games via Bootcamp? It sounds like you are saying a multiple GPU setup these days in a PC (2 or 3) aren't worth paying the money for the extra GPU's... Or am I missing your point?
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I'm not the one making the point. I didn't write the article.

You could certainly play some lighter games with that hardware at lower resolutions, but that's neither here nor there.

If they had pursued the game market, who knows what hardware they would have used? Besides, this was in - what - 2007? That was 4 years before there would be such a thing as an AMD APU.
 
Krazy925 said:
Apple can't even get out of their own way with the AppleTV and I don't expect it to survive.
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There are some people, maybe like yourself that want the AppleTV to do lots of different things and be multifunctional (maybe you are not this way, I can't infer 100% from your post). But there are a many people as well like myself who bought the Apple (multiple times) simply to watch movies and listen to music. I don't care about games or other such "apps" on the ATV. I mean, sure, I have a couple things I would like to see from the ATV, but they all deal specifically with video and audio.

People talk down about the ATV. But who had the intuitive interface? Who had the responsive system? Who had Airplay to display stuff on your phone or computer? I don't doubt devices here and there did these things, but Apple brought it all together and made it happen. Sure Google came along later and did all this for cheap......but where was the initial risk???

I like simple devices. I wish someone would still make one of these. Instead nothing has a display anymore cause they just expect you to use a TV or phone or laptop.
sb-m1000-large.jpg
 
westrock2000 said:
There are some people, maybe like yourself that want the AppleTV to do lots of different things and be multifunctional (maybe you are not this way, I can't infer 100% from your post). But there are a many people as well like myself who bought the Apple (multiple times) simply to watch movies and listen to music. I don't care about games or other such "apps" on the ATV. I mean, sure, I have a couple things I would like to see from the ATV, but they all deal specifically with video and audio.

People talk down about the ATV. But who had the intuitive interface? Who had the responsive system? Who had Airplay to display stuff on your phone or computer? I don't doubt devices here and there did these things, but Apple brought it all together and made it happen. Sure Google came along later and did all this for cheap......but where was the initial risk???

I like simple devices. I wish someone would still make one of these. Instead nothing has a display anymore cause they just expect you to use a TV or phone or laptop.
sb-m1000-large.jpg
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Me? Games on an ATV? Never was my desire.
I have a PS4/XBONE for TV gaming. I guess my big point was, Apple did try gaming on the ATV. That was definitely in marketing materials. Now is the argument did they REALLY try? I would agree that they could have tried harder.

I have 2 of the ATV3s. They're simple, but efficient. Somewhere earlier in the chain I listed what I meant by get out of their own way. I would disagree and say the Roku is just as intuitive. I haven't spent any time on FIRETV or much time with Android TV(it's baked into my TV). I'm also pretty sure when I was messing around with the AndroidTV I could airplay my iPhone onto it. Pretty badass IMO.

What I was saying about getting out of their own way was the lack of 4K support because iTunes doesn't sell 4K content. Also I like being "future proofed", which is neither here nor there. Which is nice and all, I get the lack of content. No native amazon prime support. I really don't feel like I was asking for a lot. The lack of prime seriously pushed me into the Roku camp for my third streaming box. I would describe myself as the target audience for apple products since I have a few, and I'm normally kind to Apple as a company, because they have a polished product.

It lost them a sale however, and I know that other people did something similar. I'm not saying this because I expect Apple to call me and apologize or that they even care, but as people are upgrading to 4K televisions they want a "4K box" regardless of whether the content is there today, were talking about 4 years from now which is pretty close to how long I've had my ATVs I think.

Also The Man In The High Castle looks pretty damn neat in 4K.
 
Oh ok, I misinterpreted you. I also have no desire to buy the ATV4 due to shifting to apps instead of say DTS-HD decoding or 4K (though I can't rip 4K yet, so not a true concern for me).
 
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