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I've been shouting this for as long as I could: Once Apple (or maybe an Android company or even someone new) enters this market in earnest, Microsoft/Sony/Ninte

I've been shouting this for as long as I could: Once Apple (or maybe an Android company or even someone new) enters this market in earnest, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo should take watch. Apple has the infrastructure to deliver games, has tiny/medium/large touch devices that can connect via bluetooth in many customers hands (which already play games), and many many game developers familiar with the platforms. Every big studio has an iDevice team and there are hundreds of good iPhone games out there. If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. You can already do cool stuff like stream the game to the TV via airplay and use the device for a score/map screen (basically a WiiU) and it works surprisingly well and doesn't need cords or anything. The only other real competitor here I see is one of the bigger android vendors like Sony or Samsung. If Sony could get the company in shape and stop producing products that compete with each other, they have many of the same advantages as Apple. They have android devices, experience making console/tv/etc hardware and even own game studios. They make every kind of electronic that goes in the tv room. But Sony has had this for years so that seems unlikely. They have already had huge employee slashes and are floundering. Samsung has the same thing going on. They make everything and they have huge android phone/tablet penetration. I could see them easily jumping in on this and I hope they do. More competition blowing the doors of this stagnant industry could lead to a renaissance of smaller game studios. EDIT I should add that Valve also has a chance here. There are many rumors swarming about a valve console or something similar. They have the distribution system and the games market experience, but have no experience with how to make hardware. Remember the last time that happened? I believe they called it the "red ring of death". I'm not saying valve can't pull it off but hardware is hard to get right. I look forward to what they do.

anigbrowl 14y ago
It'll be interesing to see what Sony reveals next week when they unveil the Playstation 4; one hopes this device will be capable of downloading something in the background. I have to say I find a lot of Apple stuff maddeningly quirky as well, and don't think they have a magic fix for this space. But they could certainly shake the space up if they choose to enter it, and I wish they would since more competition is good.
- theevocater 14y ago
  I am super curious. Sony is at a huge turning point here. They are faltering badly and sort of stumbling around. For example, they released the new PSP and the Xperia Play last year which are basically direct competitors. They have all kinds of products but no real clear strategy as to how to put them together. It boggles the mind that they sell everything in the home but haven't found a way to actually get it all together. They literally sell everything from laptops to televisions to receivers to speakers to phones to consoles and more. Just imagine if they had a strategy as coherent as Apple's across all those products.
nemothekid 14y ago
>If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. This opinion is pushed around a lot, however I cannot really see it happening, and I doubt Apple will ever pursue such a strategy. For Apple to enter the console market, they would have to compete with the big boys, meaning if it can't push 100 million polygons at 1080p it will never get great adoption (who will want develop for a console with graphics out of 2005, and who will buy a console that doesn't have Call of Halo 7?). This means they have to create a modern console platform AND sell it at the price of an iPad. I'm not sure how the ghost of Jobs will take the news once he finds out Apple is selling hardware at a loss. Next I doubt they would have anything to gain other than "you can now play CoD on the Apple ecosystem." They would lose money on the hardware, they wouldn't make much on the software if App Store profits mean anything (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/tech/29964545_1_app-store-gene-munster-apple http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/tech/29964545... reports they may have made ~$300 million). It just doesn't seem like a good idea finically. As far as the game console ecosystem goes I don't think MS/Sony/Nintendo will ever have to worry about Apple. All in all, I am not really convinced that the App Store market will work for any of them. I strongly believe only Valve has the resources (and direction* ) to transition into the digital delivery era, at the expense of introducing yet another company into my living room. Still the question is how do you effectively deliver a magic box capable of playing Call of Duty at 1080p at the price of current consoles sustainably/profitably. Vavle's success so far doesn't worry about hardware. Their customers are either willing to spend $1000+ on a gaming every couple years, or just suck it up and blame Dell/HP for why their laptop can't play CoD. * If Sony got their shit together, you are right, I believe they would take over the living room. They almost did it with PS2, and if the PS2 had come a bit later, or the PS3 was able to sell as much they might have done it. I think Sony could have built an Apple level brand loyalty (in the sense of having a Sony Computer, Phone, Laptop, Console) and (if they got much better at software development), they could have built a Sony store to manage your content on all those devices (after all they already own most of the movies and music). In another universe Sony may have been a Google + Hardware.
- natbro 14y ago
  I honestly don't know if Apple will enter this market, but I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are about the profit margin as the reason not to. I think they could build a next-generation-console-capable Apple-TV and sell it at or below $199 while keeping their 40% margin. They would sell you each additional wireless controller (and it would be sweetly designed, I suspect) for the standard $79 peripheral cost. The primary contributor to their bill-of-material cost savings vs. competitors is that they already own and/or license at huge volume their CPU and GPU cores and know how to fabricate them in multi-core formats with high-speed cross-connectivity. They can also buy RAM and flash for SSD storage at better costs than anybody else. These are the primary cost drivers (basically money flowing to IBM, nVidia, etc for CPU/GPU and money flowing elsewhere for RAM/SSD/HDD) for xBox, PS, Wii. Apple would have dramatically lower overall startup costs versus the original xBox/xBox360 and PS2/3 given they already have a toolchain and SMP operating system with sandboxing, an App Store and its back-end, user-accounts and payment infrastructure, and numerous other costs shared with the rest of the Mac and iOS ecosystems. Apple wouldn't have a lot of work to do to train developers: tell us the screen resolution, how to interact with the controller and any other new hardware capabilities, tell us anything special about the GPU's and let us go to town with the existing toolchain we are using for iPhone and iPad. So, again, I have no idea if they'll do it, I just think it would be a very profitable business for them.
mikec3k 14y ago
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the OUYA becomes available. A lot of major developers have already committed to support it. I can't wait to get my Kickstarter unit in a few months. I met with them last year when they were talking about possibly acquiring Bionic Panda Games (which unfortunately didn't happen) and they seem to have an interesting business model. Every game will have a free version, either a full but limited version or a playable demo, and they'll have their own store similar to Google Play. The only deficiency is that they don't have a motion controller like the Kinect or Wiimote.
- theevocater 14y ago
  I wish it well but my assumption is that it will fail :( Hardware is hard; software is hard; distribution is hard; but they want to do all of it all at once. I wish them the best but I don't see them lasting unless they get acquired

anigbrowl 14y ago

It'll be interesing to see what Sony reveals next week when they unveil the Playstation 4; one hopes this device will be capable of downloading something in the background. I have to say I find a lot of Apple stuff maddeningly quirky as well, and don't think they have a magic fix for this space. But they could certainly shake the space up if they choose to enter it, and I wish they would since more competition is good.

theevocater 14y ago
I am super curious. Sony is at a huge turning point here. They are faltering badly and sort of stumbling around. For example, they released the new PSP and the Xperia Play last year which are basically direct competitors. They have all kinds of products but no real clear strategy as to how to put them together. It boggles the mind that they sell everything in the home but haven't found a way to actually get it all together. They literally sell everything from laptops to televisions to receivers to speakers to phones to consoles and more. Just imagine if they had a strategy as coherent as Apple's across all those products.

nemothekid 14y ago

>If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. This opinion is pushed around a lot, however I cannot really see it happening, and I doubt Apple will ever pursue such a strategy. For Apple to enter the console market, they would have to compete with the big boys, meaning if it can't push 100 million polygons at 1080p it will never get great adoption (who will want develop for a console with graphics out of 2005, and who will buy a console that doesn't have Call of Halo 7?). This means they have to create a modern console platform AND sell it at the price of an iPad. I'm not sure how the ghost of Jobs will take the news once he finds out Apple is selling hardware at a loss. Next I doubt they would have anything to gain other than "you can now play CoD on the Apple ecosystem." They would lose money on the hardware, they wouldn't make much on the software if App Store profits mean anything (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/tech/29964545_1_app-store-gene-munster-apple http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/tech/29964545... reports they may have made ~$300 million). It just doesn't seem like a good idea finically. As far as the game console ecosystem goes I don't think MS/Sony/Nintendo will ever have to worry about Apple. All in all, I am not really convinced that the App Store market will work for any of them. I strongly believe only Valve has the resources (and direction* ) to transition into the digital delivery era, at the expense of introducing yet another company into my living room. Still the question is how do you effectively deliver a magic box capable of playing Call of Duty at 1080p at the price of current consoles sustainably/profitably. Vavle's success so far doesn't worry about hardware. Their customers are either willing to spend $1000+ on a gaming every couple years, or just suck it up and blame Dell/HP for why their laptop can't play CoD. * If Sony got their shit together, you are right, I believe they would take over the living room. They almost did it with PS2, and if the PS2 had come a bit later, or the PS3 was able to sell as much they might have done it. I think Sony could have built an Apple level brand loyalty (in the sense of having a Sony Computer, Phone, Laptop, Console) and (if they got much better at software development), they could have built a Sony store to manage your content on all those devices (after all they already own most of the movies and music). In another universe Sony may have been a Google + Hardware.

natbro 14y ago
I honestly don't know if Apple will enter this market, but I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are about the profit margin as the reason not to. I think they could build a next-generation-console-capable Apple-TV and sell it at or below $199 while keeping their 40% margin. They would sell you each additional wireless controller (and it would be sweetly designed, I suspect) for the standard $79 peripheral cost. The primary contributor to their bill-of-material cost savings vs. competitors is that they already own and/or license at huge volume their CPU and GPU cores and know how to fabricate them in multi-core formats with high-speed cross-connectivity. They can also buy RAM and flash for SSD storage at better costs than anybody else. These are the primary cost drivers (basically money flowing to IBM, nVidia, etc for CPU/GPU and money flowing elsewhere for RAM/SSD/HDD) for xBox, PS, Wii. Apple would have dramatically lower overall startup costs versus the original xBox/xBox360 and PS2/3 given they already have a toolchain and SMP operating system with sandboxing, an App Store and its back-end, user-accounts and payment infrastructure, and numerous other costs shared with the rest of the Mac and iOS ecosystems. Apple wouldn't have a lot of work to do to train developers: tell us the screen resolution, how to interact with the controller and any other new hardware capabilities, tell us anything special about the GPU's and let us go to town with the existing toolchain we are using for iPhone and iPad. So, again, I have no idea if they'll do it, I just think it would be a very profitable business for them.

mikec3k 14y ago

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the OUYA becomes available. A lot of major developers have already committed to support it. I can't wait to get my Kickstarter unit in a few months. I met with them last year when they were talking about possibly acquiring Bionic Panda Games (which unfortunately didn't happen) and they seem to have an interesting business model. Every game will have a free version, either a full but limited version or a playable demo, and they'll have their own store similar to Google Play. The only deficiency is that they don't have a motion controller like the Kinect or Wiimote.

theevocater 14y ago
I wish it well but my assumption is that it will fail :( Hardware is hard; software is hard; distribution is hard; but they want to do all of it all at once. I wish them the best but I don't see them lasting unless they get acquired