It's definitely the lack of a bundled controller. The Siri remote is completely unsuitable for the great majority of games. While third-party controllers exist, it's not a viable proposition for a studio to make a controller-required game when so few Apple TV owners have such a controller. (And in fact, while this may or may not be true today, I believe at least initially Apple required all games to be playable with just the Siri remote, so controller support could never be more than optional.)<p>If Apple had bundled in a controller and funded a few high quality games that don't have microtransactions, it probably could be a pretty serious game console.
> Apple needs to do more than just offer developers the tools to make games for its platforms. It needs to sell consumers on the fact that these machines are for games.<p>Apple needs to do a whole lot more first for the Apple TV to be considered close to iOS devices. The remote is an abomination that Apple should get rid of and then go back to the drawing board with a new design team. Usability wise, it's terrible — tiny, slippery, symmetrical shape where one can't figure out quickly where the buttons are and doesn't have enough buttons for control (the behavior when the side edges are pressed is unpredictable and annoying).<p>As for tvOS, it's neglected by Apple to such an extent that there's not much going on in every release. It's still a "hobby" project that Apple can't decide to spend time and money on. After all these years of apps on the platform, there is still no straightforward way to update apps individually from the App Store! Seriously, if that's not a sign of it being a hobby project or almost abandonware, I don't know what is.<p>Apple needs to show that it's serious about the Apple TV, for real. It seems to be distracted with things not directly related to Apple TV. If the past and this year are any indication, it's clear that there won't be a game controller from Apple for the foreseeable future. There are other broken things that need to be fixed for Apple TV to be taken seriously in this space.
I've been interested in Apple TV for ages, but the demo setups in the apple stores have been terrible. My WDTV is on it's last legs so I'm in the market for a replacement TV client for streaming video. I'd like that to be an Apple TV, but for £200 it needs to be a properly viable games machine, or it just doesn't offer enough value over a £30 Chromecast.<p>Nintendo had the controller issue solved 12 years ago with the Wii. Come on Apple!
Apple doesn't give a shit about games, and they're a detriment to the company's overall brand image anyway. This much is crystal clear, and there's no incentive whatsoever to be a game developer working in Apple's ecosystem save the UNIX background. Everything marketed as game-capable on any of Apple's products is convenient happenstance that they're taking advantage of, and none of it is planned for.<p>VR on iMac Pro: Great you finally had enough pixel fill-rate to catch up with sub-$2k systems. No one plays VR on iMac Pro. Who's the demographic there? Professionals? Nah, performance is still better on Windows systems.<p>Metal: Instead of letting vendors write the graphics drivers, you do, so you control the graphics stack, too. Great, but not for games. This might make your expensive windowing system run a bit better on your 5k monitors, though.<p>ProMotion: Fantastic for professionals, especially artists, and great for consumers, but those rates are utilized mostly in hardware accelerated software, and not for usage in iOS games. Unless the game is simple and has a low polygon budget, you're not holding consistent 120 FPS. It's not happening. Maybe in legacy titles finally ported to iPad and iPhone.<p>Game capabilities in Apple's hardware are possible with them pursuing other features, but they are never a focus. That's perfectly fine! But Apple will never produce a game friendly platform and you need to understand that when developing games.<p>Engines that conveniently have the ability to compile to Apple's hardware targets should be thought of as a nice-to-have and not a core feature.<p>Apple's iPhone games are a development-expensive variant of the flash games of yesteryear, with far less accessibility to young artists and developers.