Angry Robot

AppleTV the Console Edges Closer

Here’s a take on how AppleTV could disrupt gaming.1 Consoles, pursuing hardcore gamers, have gotten more and more expensive relative to PCs. As I’ve mentioned many times before, smartphones & tablets have replaced consoles for casual gamers. They are general-purpose devices that happen to run games really well. Why buy a dedicated gaming device when you have something that does the job in your pocket?

Like the iPhone and iPad, AppleTV also runs iOS, just a more restricted version, without the App Store. As this post details, though, recent changes to iOS mean that the AppleTV is just about ready to transform into a pretty great gaming box. It would be easy to play the games on your phone on your TV, with an optional hardware controller (like one of these). There would be better performance than before (the new AppleTV would presumably have the chip currently in the iPhone & iPad, but this may even work on current-gen AppleTVs). Games you buy on your AppleTV would also work on your phone & tablet. Suddenly the console of choice for casual gamers – and many hardcores – would become clear.

1 Like Gruber I think the two tiers of AppleTV are one tier too many.