Here’s What the New Apple TV Offers Gamers
Not content turning your phone into a Candy Crush dispenser, Apple is turning its gaze toward your living room.
During the company’s big September event, Apple unveiled a new version of Apple TV designed to bring apps to your TV. That includes games, and, unlike past Apple TV systems, this one seems built from the ground up with play in mind.
[Related: The New Apple TV Will Change Television Forever (Maybe)]
The new remote, for example, features a glass touch surface. You can use it to swipe through menus or fast-forward movies, but you can also use it to control games, just as you would on your iPhone or iPad.
Crossy Road (Photo: Ben Silverman)
Developers from Hipster Whale showed this feature in action by demoing a new set-top box version of their 2014 iOS hit, Crossy Road. It’s largely the same game you (probably) played to death on your iPhone, but it’s now got a multiplayer component exclusive to Apple TV. One player uses the remote while another uses an iPhone or iPad to cooperatively jump through traffic.
The remote doesn’t stop with touch controls, however. It also features a few physical buttons and motion controls, so you can swing it like a Nintendo Wii remote to hit a baseball, for example.
That’s exactly what Rock Band developer Harmonix demonstrated in their exclusive Apple TV game, Beat Sports. It’s a rhythmic sports minigame compilation, akin to what you might have played a few years on the original Wii, that supports four simultaneous players (provided you have enough iDevices laying around.)
Beat Sports (Image: Ben Silverman)
Interestingly, Apple also name-dropped Guitar Hero Live and Disney Infinity 3.0 as upcoming Apple TV titles. That’s certainly notable — getting legit, triple-A console games running on a more affordable machine is kind of a big deal — though we didn’t actually see them in action. It’s unclear if these are the exact versions that appear on the Xbox One and PS4, or if they’ve been stripped of certain features.
The deeper integration of games and apps into the Apple TV is good news for Apple fans yet to pick up a streaming set-top box, but it’s a far cry from the notion that Apple is somehow taking on gaming’s big boys in Microsoft and Sony. While there will undoubtedly be plenty of happy Angry Birds fans slingshotting away on their 60” HDTV, I’m unconvinced simply moving games from mobile devices to the living room will do much to disrupt the embedded, traditional consoles.
We’ve already seen systems like the Amazon Fire TV, Ouya, and Nvidia Shield pull this trick with Android games, and while there are some cool games out there, no one is dropping their PS4 for an Android microconsole. Sure, Apple has a smoother store and often better games, but few people will skip a more powerful dedicated game system (and access to tons of high-quality video games) because Where’s My Water? is now on their television.
The real key here is exclusive games, and while Apple at least showed off a few, they’ll need more than a port of a year-old iPhone game and a minigame compilation to get gamers interested. That broad approach worked for the Wii years ago, and while Apple is keen to revive the fake-bat-swinging, screen-breaking, casual-games market, I’m afraid that particular ship has sailed.
But hey, some multiplayer Crossy Road while you wait for a new episode of Game of Thrones to start? That sounds like fun. The Apple TV arrives this October for $149 (32 GB) and $199 (64 GB).
