The Apple Games Console?
With Apple having had so much success in the consumer market with the iPod, Mac, iPhone and iTunes, and with the new iPad freshly announced, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Apple are going to release a games console. Jono Bacon is convinced they will and with his partner in crime, Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge, the duo discuss whether it is viable that Apple could release a console and whether they would be successful.
Remember, we are just the start of the discussion, and we are looking to you good folks to join us! What do you think? Do you think it is viable that Apple are going to release a games console? If so, what kind of product do you envisage it as? Do you think they would be able to compete with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? Share your thoughts in the shot comments below…
40 Comments to “The Apple Games Console?”
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Just because Apple failed with the Pippin doesn’t mean they’ll fail next time – Nintendo has an impressive portfolio of failed products, despite its overall success (VirtualBoy, anyone?)
I can imagine Apple releasing an all-in-one box for the living room, despite that functionality existing in other devices. I can’t say for sure whether it’ll be a success or not though. Console gamers tend to have a die-hard loyalty to their platform of choice, so their main market would be Apple users who don’t currently game, which the Nintendo already serves very well.
Plus, games consoles are always sold at a loss. Given the price of most Apple devices, I can see them pricing themselves out of the market.
Games consoles aren’t always sold at a loss. Nintendo’s Wii has always been sold at a profit, for example.
Like the DS and every other nintendo product
. They are clever like that. That’s only half the story. When you create games for them you have to buy cartridges directly from them and pay for them up front so whatever happens to the game afterwards – whether it sells or not – nintendo are still making a profit.
Brilliant businessmen.
Well shut me up. It’s obviously been too long since I was subscribed to NGC magazine! I’m amazed that they manage to make a profit given the selling price, and all the gubbins it’s got, but there you go!
I think apple will be happy with taking a percentage of apps – game apps on the touch, iphone and ipad.
But the point that it will rejig the apple tv so you can also play games on it might be where they will go.
I think that the wii element you only just touched on at the end is the most interesting. If the Wii didn’t exist, it might be thought that Apple would produce something like it. The Wii really should have been the media hub along with the games console (the remotes are remotes even). It comes wirelessly enabled and can sit pretty small next to your TV..
The iTunes etc.. of apple, nice media streaming functionality etc would have worked really well on Wii, but I think that as the Wii already exists, apple can’t produce the next gen apple TV that also does stuff the wii does.
Imagine the wii was not here, and apple TV 2.0 had games wiimote like remotes, and some games along with it’s Media centre stuff. People would have been blown away, but I just don’t think apple can put to two together and wow us.. Mind you I didn’t think apple could make an oversized ipod touch and wow, but it seems to have.
The final thought I have is that of Dev Kits. Current console dev kits involve £1000s for each part (and there are different ones required at different phases some times). The iPhone one’s are, well, iPhones. So you can enable dev on the actual device, this might be where an Apple console could succeed. Not on the big publishers who can afford the next expensive dev kit, but the little guys who have great ideas but need a low cost dev kit to be able to make them happen outside of a pc..
I agree, and another thing we didn’t touch on was if Apple were to acquire Nintendo. Wouldn’t that be interesting…
And the open-source angle is where? Sorry, but it sounds like you’re angling for a job at apple
Also, developing for the iphone isn’t as smooth and easy as you’re implying and devs do it because it’s got a big market, not because they’re enamoured with the technology (as you suggested). Developement for the iphone sucks donkey-balls, especially when you have to learn objective c.
Also, I’ve heard your predictions in the past and you don’t have a very good record of those coming true
…but yeah, the kung fu mod for max payne was awesome.
Why does there need to be an open source angle? As per the About page, “Shot Of Jaq is an irreverent take on the goings on in the Open Source, Free Culture and technology world, delivered to your ears via weekly shots.” Google pulling out of China isn’t about open source either
I’m not being wholly serious.
As for the actual shot’s topic I don’t really see apple going for a dedicated gaming console like an xbox. Their customers aren’t that kind of gamers. The kind of gamers they would go after have already been sold on a wii and apple is no match for nintendo in this field.
As for going via the media centre route that may well happen but I don’t see playing games on it being all that important a feature even if all they needed to to would be to stick on a wireless controller in the box. I’m not an apple expert but they strike me as a company that doesn’t like adding superfluous features that do a ‘me to’. They want few feature and want to tout them all as ground-breaking and class-leading (even when they aren’t). You could say they like streamlining they devices or you could say they don’t want to confuse and baffle their clients with too much functionality. It’s easier to market this way too.
I’m ready to eat all my words in a few years’ time
If you’re going to have a successful one-stop media and gaming centre, then it will need to be sufficiently modular to allow for the upgrades that gamers want while avoiding the pain of transferring my existing content from old box to new box. If I have 1.2TB of content stored on my Apple Pippin Elite (TM) then I don’t want to be hit with huge pain when I upgrade to the Apple Pippin Frontier (TM) in a couple of years time. Sometimes separates actually make sense…
Having said that, I think you’re wrong. The console market is all about making money from software (games) rather than hardware, whereas Apple make huge profits on hardware alone (and software too). I’m not sure I see the benefit for them, unless they’re able to make a generic enough entertainment machine that people are willing to pay a “real” price for it before shelling out for games too.
Firstly, Apple Pippin Elite made me physically LOL.
I agree that the money is in software not hardware, but that is only because traditionally that is how it worked. Apple are in the business of making great software but also incredible desirable hardware. Not only could they rake in the cash from taking a cut of games sold for their system, but they could offer way more content for their console than others and make money there too. And then…as I just said…I am sure they would make money from the hardware because I think even a shit Apple console will look 100 times better than any existing competitor as that is basically what Apple do.
Weeeeelll … it would be great … but I’m rather skeptic.
First off they would have to bring something new to the gaming scene. Otherwise it would be just an Apple TV that you can play games on witch isn’t all that exciting. Playing your tunes on guitar hero sounds interesting but it’s not enough.
And secondly they don’t have a great relation with the publishers. Things have been improving lately but they’ve been rather slow at doing that for the Mac. Somehow I don’t think a console would change things much.
Third they would be competitors with Sony which is one of their biggest content providers. I don’t think it would ruin their relationship but it might start some sparks there.
On the other hand I don’t like consoles and I’m not a fan of apple products. And my only interest in the matter is related to the fact that this could boost OpenGL use in the gaming industry.
No.
Short version, no.
There is little to no intersection between the mobile phone game market – which they have some de-facto role in, and the home games console market. They’re enjoyed by different people, for different reasons, looking for different experiences. And given Apple’s willful neglect of Mac gaming, they don’t have any credibility in the sector.
At most, a future AppleTV will run iPhone games.
What evidence do you have of this. I would argue that the PSP is contradictory to your assertion.
Also, who said Apple are only limited to the mobile games market? They have a hugely successful laptop business that could bring them hardware competency for a games console.
I’ve not finished listening yet, but I just wanted to chime in and say – Sony’s Playstation didn’t come out of nowhere.
It was the result of a falling out between Sony and Nintendo over a SNES add-on called the SNES-CD. Nintendo ditched Sony who then decided to turn the technology they’d been working on into their own stand-alone console. Thus the PlayStation was born.
Wow, I never knew that! Big “wa-pah!” to Nintendo!
Well, for a couple of console generations, at least. Things seem to be going rather well for Nintendo at the moment though, particularly in comparison to Sony who are trailing them in both handheld and home console markets.
Did you know that Nintendo is in its third century of business? True story – they were founded in 1889.
I’m not trying to be a shill for them, there’s just a lot of random trivia about them I seem to have wasted my youth memorising.
And they originally produced playing card games I believe!
If Apple are going to have a gaming platform I think it’s already here in the form of three of their existing form factors – iPhone/iPod, the iPad and Apple TV.
I can imagine future incarnations of these products being given more of a gaming focus through integration with an “iGames” store and a motion controller for the Apple TV though.
Definitely agree that they’d be going for Wii’s casual gaming market, but the Wii already does a very apple-esque job of of this already. I think the differentiator would be their vertical integration with an app-store model for game distribution, which is already looking more interesting with the release of the iPad.
I suspect that if Apple went into the game market, they would aim at a different market segment than the typical PlayStation or XBox consumer. That means they wouldn’t have to worry about what the traditional major game publishers thought. They could cultivate smaller independent publishers who would target the Apple platform specifically. They may also buy a smaller game publisher and use it to seed the market with the type of games they would like to see.
The obvious way of selling games would be through the Apple app store. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Apple wanted games to be written directly for their platform. If they relied on ports from PS or XBox consoles, then the comparison would always be whether the Apple console was “as good as” the other platforms. I don’t think that Apple would want to encourage that sort of thinking. It’s rather like they don’t allow Flash on the iPhone or iPad because they’re afraid that Flash would make them look bad by running more slowly than on some other platforms.
I think that the iPad might give a foretaste of what a game console would be like. If Apple comes out with new game development software or game peripherals for the iPad, then that would be a possible indication of what they would do with a device that was designed specifically as a game console. Apple would want to seed the market for “iGame” games and apps, and the iPad would be the obvious way of doing that.
If Apple succeeded with an “iGame”, then we would probably then see some other companies trying to create something comparable based on Android. That would be a tough nut to crack because of the need to line up content. Again, cross-over content from “AndroidPad” devices would help.
Has anyone mentioned that Valve is releasing steam on OSX? I just signed up for the beta.
Valve have confirmed that they are releasing all their major titles on the platform.
Could the future be Team Fortress 2 on my AppleTV. Hell yes!
Without wishing to look like a conspiracy theory nutjob, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple would pre-seed ideas of a new console by striking deals with people such as Valve first.
That doesn’t sound nut jobby at all, it would make perfect sense. There could be a great synergy between Valve who are the undisputed heavy hitter in the online game distribution market and a very successful studio in its own right and Apple who bring a large, fanatically loyal user base that are well versed in the act of trading creditcard details for digital goods and services.
This would be particularly useful if Apple where gun shy when it comes to an ‘Apple games store’ in itunes and god knows they could do with the gaming credibility.
Wouldn’t an actual TV make more sense as their next move (with games being part of it)?
I have an AppleTV, and it would be great if that was the guts of the TV instead of being a shiny box with ugly cables sprouting out of it.
This would be more Apple-like, because Instead of competing head to head with the PS3, Wii and 360 they would cut them out altogether by producing a “magical” TV.
Plus I can imagine the profit margins on a proper AppleTV would be a lot higher than a low-end gaming console.
I dunno, I think TVs would be seen by Apple as uninteresting commodity objects with a low price point with limited margin, huge competition, and no post-sale selling point such as games software.
Bah even more sucking up to apple, when are people going to get enough of apple which is the totally opposite of open source a and community. I’m personally sick of everything lately being about apple, it just make me sick, I wanted to hear about open source and community effort, and I get to hear about a company that lives of killing communities, and selling overpriced plastic…
Bit harsh, maybe?
Two points:
Hmm, I kind of see your point, but still, I think that it would be relevant to take out some of the cases where it might work, like looking at the price levels, apple is notorious for taking high prices for their products, yes, for fanboys that swallow everything that apple show down their throat that might not seem like a big problem, but I keep thinking that this is kind of an issue. well, strangely this isn’t mentioned at all, their inability to cooperate with anyone, locking down their product, making it as difficult as they can for people to use their mp3players and services if they don’t want to use them exactly how they want them to, I still don’t see why they are praised up in the skies… But it might be me being an ignorant troll, and that apple are our saviors..
And yes I am listening to the other shots, and enjoying them immensely it is just that this one stroked me the wrong way, I have been disagreeing before, but well, since you were looking at it in a balanced way I did not have any problem with it at all, this time though, the episode went out like a bj of one of the companies that are as opposite as you can get to community and open source.
Just so I understand you correctly…did we actually say that we thought an Apple console was a good idea, at any point? I certainly didn’t intend to give that impression. Speculation about whether they will do is interesting, even if I myself would have no intention of buying any such console.
Not an apple console, but apple products.
Ok, I think Apple could make a move into the game console market but I doubt they will. I think their best chance of success would be if they can adapt the “App Store” model to the game console.
A development kit for the PS3 was $20,000 when it first came out (they have since lowered the cost to attract developers), the Xbox 360 has been $10,000 from the beginning, and Nintendo lowered the bar down to $2000 to attract developers. Nintendo had lost the most developers (thanks to the Gamecube) so they made it cheaper to attract a lot of independent 3rd party developers. If you want to make a game for any of these companies, you have to pay the price for the development kit, sign a licensing agreement, and pay licensing fees in order to do it. And you game then has to be approved.
Apple can make a huge impact if they break this mold. If they take their “App Store” model and apply it to game consoles, people will develop for it like crazy just like they have the iPhone. If they were to let anyone develop games (or apps) for their system, you know they are going to have it all sorts of locked down and subject to their approval. But, at least people would have a chance to develop apps and games for a home gaming console.
I really think a better contender for a gaming console would be Google. I would LOVE to see a Google gaming console. If they did the same type of thing but used their android “App Store” model, it would catch on MUCH better. With Apple, you have to use their app store, but with android you can release anything for it on your own and not worry about needing Google’s approval, or have to worry about Google removing your game or app, or needing to go through Google’s app store to release your game or app.
Either one of these situations would be better than what is happening right now in the gaming industry, but I would much prefer if Google did it, not Apple.
How does making a games console fit into Google’s mission to organise the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful?
Did you see Lively? Google might contribute from a technical point of view by helping get accelerated 3D graphics into web standards (see the O3D project) – but I can’t see them going heavily into games. Just doesn’t seem to fit.
I think that apple already have a `games console’ with the IPhone/IPod touch and possibly also the IPad, I don’t see how adding another single purpose device would be any advantage to them. Casual gamers are far more likely to want to play games on something they already have, rather than going out and buying something just for that purpose.
I think y’all are right in that Apple desperately want to be the entertainment/multimedia hub “under your TV in your living room” as Jono put it. However, I think that they will do so with their existing products and not necessarily by targeting the gaming market explicitly.
I just don’t see Apple wanting to compete in the gaming arena; hardcore gaming is already divided up by Sony and Microsoft while the casual gamers are already satisfied with the Wii.
Apple is a hardware company first and foremost that also happens to distribute software onto their hardware. As others have pointed out, profits in the console market aren’t generally made from the hardware but instead from the development platform and the games themselves. Thus any venture into this market would mean significant investment in software that Apple has not done up to now.
I haven’t listened yet, but read the comments and (hopefully) my comment makes sense.
The world is moving to web delivery. Which means traditional all powerful games consoles and media players are old skool.
The new world will be cloud based gaming with the functionality built into small simple boxes like AppleTV.
Apple already have iTunes for delivery of streaming content, I expect it could also delivery streaming games.
Job got rid of floppies for CDs before everybody else (NeXT and iMac), Introduced USB before everybody else. Got the music player right. I can’t see Apple just doing what everybody else is doing, they usually try to innovate.
Why create a gaming platform when you can create a gaming service. Just waiting for the bandwidth to catch up.
Albert.
What you’re describing there is Steam, though, no?
Hi all
The Playstaion can already stream media from a media server.
It can play music / dvd’s / blueray’s and view photos
you can install vidzone and stream music videos from sony for free
It has a built in web browser (with flash)
playstation Home bit like secound life (abit..)
Playstation store for selling games / renting films including some new releases
you can buy Play which turn the playstation into a pvr
it also has wireless, bluetooth and usb to connect devices to it such as keyboard mouse web cam
The device you want is a playstation if sony can’t sell a do all media device with its connections in the media industry i can’t see apple doing it.
also sky would be a better bet to bring out a games console as they already have millions of people paying to connect to there services tv/phone/broadband games would be a good move.
Microsoft has been developing a device to control everything in your home for years. I think the xbox is a test bed / way into your home for the device.
xbox is a media connector or something like that which lets you connect to media centre on your pc to deliver content to your tv i think it lets you record tv as well.
As for games you can develop them for free with xna(visual studio) as far as i know and sell the on xbox store.
i don’t think apple is well place in gaming, music, video / tv markets to make a device that will do all the things discussed above.
We used to have a little dog called Pippin, bless his cotton socks. Looked like a large ball of cotton after he had the snip…
Anyway.
I don’t think Apple really want to be in the living room as much as people think. If they did, they’d have made the Apple TV more open so it could use external hard drives and common formats (e.g. divx) and, more importantly, would include support for tv tuners by allowing integration of things like EyeTV, which is already a fantastic tv-only environment for MacOSX.
They could easily take an environment like Plex, make a TV tuner plugin produced by EyeTV and they’d be miles ahead of where they are today and where they’ve been for ages. AppleTV is dead AFAICT. There’s been no progress on it for years.
Just my two grumpy cents.
Can’t say I think Apple will go for the game market in anything other than the ipad and ipod touch/iphone market. Translating the amazing multi-touch capability to a television just doesn’t sound doable to me.
Has anyone mentioned that Valve is releasing steam on OSX? I just signed up for the beta.
Valve have confirmed that they are releasing all their major titles on the platform.
Could the future be Team Fortress 2 on my AppleTV. Hell yes!