Apple TV will Focus on Gaming

It appears that after many long years, we finally have a new competitor for your living room’s TV: Apple is ‘officially’ entering the console race with the Apple TV.

Now, we’ve long suspected that it was only a matter of time before Apple decided it was worth their time and money to try to make a committed effort into joining the video game world. Up until this point, their presence has largely been on the periphery; the iPhone and iPad, while popular for mobile gaming, weren’t designed with gaming in mind, and if you walk into a PC gaming store with a Macbook under your arm you’re probably going to be laughed out. But Apple, like many companies, enjoys money, and there’s a lot of money to be had in the gaming market these days.

And the Apple TV, which will be formally announced this Wednesday, will be the hat they throw into the ring--according to a recent report by the New York Times.

Now, the Apple TV isn’t designed to woo traditional ‘hardcore’ gamers--it will hardly be competition for the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One. Nintendo, however, with a focus on casual, family games--just like the Apple TV aims to do--might actually have competition that it cannot merely brush aside this time.

Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and 3DO, had this to say:
 

“No company has done more for the digital man-machine interface than Apple. They’ve warmed up to games and are a worthy candidate to win the family room in the next decade, though the competition and inertia are epic.”

Now, there’s a lot we still don’t know about the Apple TV, so it’s hard to gauge exactly how--or even if--the Apple TV will fare against Nintendo. Apple’s success in gaming so far, as most will know, has largely been in mobile games that cost very little money to buy and little time to play. So a “sit-down-and-play” experience is certainly new to them, but probably no out of their depth… at least, if they can coerce the right developers into working for them.

We’ll find out more this Wednesday.