Opinion: Apple TV Makes Gaming a Trojan Horse, Again

After months of speculation, Apple finally announced the revisions to its Apple TV yesterday. The new set-top box carries the requisite tech upgrades and some new bells and whistles, but its standout feature for gamers is the new App Store. This is a challenge to the console dominance of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, but not a direct one. By tying its big-screen gaming fortunes to another device, Apple is banking on the strength of a non-gaming box to expand the gaming market--just as it did with the iPhone.

In fact, video games on Apple TV were treated almost as an afterthought. The Apple TV presentation was expansive, taking up almost half of the two-hour presentation, and games only made up a few minutes of it. That's because, while games on the App Store have given Apple a solid revenue stream, it is not interested in making a device catered toward those who would buy a system for games alone. This is the way the audience for video games expands: you market a product that people want, and then they discover that it can play games as well. It worked before, and Apple is trying to make lightning strike twice.

In a way, this approach is the direct inverse of the one we've seen from console manufacturers. Microsoft, Sony, and to a lesser extent even Nintendo, have attempted to turn their consoles into entertainment devices. Nintendo's TVii failed to gain traction, and the Xbox One's entertainment focus was promptly dropped as the company chose to recenter its priorities on pleasing the core base of gamers. Sony's PlayStation Vue may still pan out, and all of the consoles sport at least a few entertainment apps like Hulu and Netflix, but for the most part video game consoles have decided to put video games front and center. For them, the entertainment features are the bonus on the side.

Apple TV aims to do just the opposite. It has built the TV functionality to be front and center, from fairly deep Siri search integration to pushing all of your entertainment options into a single interface. It's an elegant solution, similar to ones we've seen elsewhere but carried off with greater cohesion. This is how it aims to capture the mainstream market, by encouraging cable-cutters to use it exclusively. And hey, while you're here, maybe try a game or two?

It's a Trojan Horse approach. For Apple, video games are the Greek soldiers hiding inside the wooden structure. As long as they can convince people to welcome the box into their homes, or the phone into their pockets, the more lucrative App market can run wild.

That said, the Apple TV does have challenges not faced in its previous experience with the mobile market. It may have more robust developer tools for games, but selling itself as a set-top box first means it's confronting similar boxes on their own turf. Others like Roku and Amazon Fire TV may not have the same infrastructure for a large games marketplace, but if Apple isn't emphasizing games it can't use that distinction to its advantage. 

It will also have to face these challengers on price. Its price points of $149 and $199 seem fairly reasonable, especially as a one-time fee that could last for years and ultimately save money if you cut the cord. Its competitors do come slightly cheaper, though. Apple managed to surmount that challenge before in the phones market, but that doesn't guarantee its success here.

Finally, time will have to tell how well the Apple TV remote control works as a game controller. It does include touch functionality, but there is an inherent design difference between an iPhone or iPad game, in which you directly touch the screen, and an Apple TV game, where you'll be touching the remote to approximate a spot on the screen. Games with tilt controls may work best in the short term, like the demo of Asphalt shown during the presentation.

If it does repeat that successful formula, though, we can expect a shake-up in the games industry similar to the one we saw almost ten years ago. The flock toward the mobile market may well become a similar land-grab to the Apple TV audience, as developers and publishers alike aim their wares toward a burgeoning casual demographic with expendable income. Apple TV may become the console challenger we've all expected from Apple for years, having learned its lessons from phones that snuck a successful video game marketplace into a device aimed squarely at non-gamers.