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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2019-08-01, 23:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca View Post
Aren't there already games for the Apple TV? What could a more powerful, gaming-focused box do that the regular Apple TV cannot?
It could be more powerful and more gaming-focused.

Apple TV plays games, generally games that are also available on mobile devices. But it doesn't really get most console-level games. It doesn't get Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto or Battlefield or Assassin's Creed or Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. It's not a "real" console-level platform, in other words, and there are signs that it's failing even as a mobile-level gaming platform. Fortnite, the biggest game of the last few years, plays on iOS and consoles but has never hit Apple TV, despite being an extremely popular iOS game. Last year Microsoft actually discontinued Minecraft for Apple TV, which is pretty shocking, because Minecraft is on everything. If Apple TV can't get enough of a player base to sustain a tvOS port of Fortnite or Minecraft, tvOS is failing as a game platform.

Having tvOS be a successful game platform is important because game consoles are fast becoming the only "computer boxes" people are buying to plug into their TVs. Virtually every TV sold now is a smart TV, so it already has access to all the streaming services — people aren't going to buy a $150+ Apple TV just for those. Heck, there's a good chance that smart TV will even have the Apple TV app. The little streaming puck market is being completely obviated by smart TVs. If Apple wants to remain in the "sell things people plug into their TV" market, they're going to have to evolve.

Do they want to remain in that market? I think they do, if they have an opportunity there. And I think they do.

You mention the prices of the current consoles — they all start at around $250-300 — but those systems have been on the market for years, and their prices have come down over time. Apple already claimed that the A12X chip they released in the iPad Pro last year had the same graphics performance as the $300 Xbox One S, and I'm sure they could have shoved that in an Apple TV-style box for less than $300. But the real opportunity is the next generation of consoles, coming in 2020.

The new consoles from Microsoft and Sony aren't going to succeed the Xbox One and PS4 at their 2020 price points — that's not how they do things. They're going to be significantly more expensive, with the current consoles continuing on as a budget option for a while. Most industry watchers are expecting a price point of around $499 for each of the new consoles. They're each going to be a biggish box with a 7nm APUs that were custom-designed by AMD, they're each going to have Blu-ray optical drives, and they're each going to have big SSDs.

That's where I think Apple has the opportunity, because in 2020 they're going to have their custom 5nm chips out. They're not going to have to pay AMD for chips. They'll be able to put their own chips into a smallish enclosure that is cheaper to ship, because they're not going to have to build in Blu-ray optical drives. They'll have to put in a bigger-than-Apple-TV SSD if they want to get the big console games, but they can probably get away with a smaller one than the other new consoles — maybe 256GB vs. 1TB. I think Apple could deliver a next-gen system with better-than-PS4 performance at potentially a much lower price than the PS5. (Will it be better-than-PS5 performance? Maybe not. Do I think it will be "close enough" for most people if it gets the good games for two hundred dollars less? Yes.)

If Apple wants to keep making TV computer boxes, they're going to have to go harder into games, because those are fast becoming the only types of TV computer boxes people buy. (I don't think anyone thinks the current tvOS hardware has been an outright success for Apple.) And maybe they'd just as soon drop the market, if they didn't think they had an opportunity to be competitive in the gaming space. But I think they do have an opportunity — a good one. They just have to make more powerful, focused hardware to accomplish that (and build bridges with developers and the like too, of course).

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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