Remember Nintendo's Wii console? Remember playing "Wii Sports" tennis for hours on end? It was a cultural phenomenon that was nearly impossible to walk into a store and buy for nearly two full years after going on sale.
Christmas 2008, when this photo was taken, was a good one for Nintendo's sales charts.
Don't expect that same reaction with the new Apple TV.
First, a caveat: I've yet to use the new Apple TV. That said, there's a few good reasons to already be skeptical of Apple's gaming ambitions on the new set-top box.
Apple Isn't Nintendo
Unveiled Wednesday at a San Francisco Apple event, the new Apple TV arriving this October has Apple's massive App Store built right in. That enables you to download popular streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu and HBO GO, as well as doing stuff like shopping for clothes (with Gilt) or securing a place to stay in your favorite vacation spot (Airbnb).
Most importantly, the App Store means games. Not games streamed over WiFi from your iPhone or iPad to the Apple TV, but games played locally, powered by the Apple TV itself. Doubling down on games, Apple's including a remote control that acts similarly to Nintendo's Wii controller.
Take a look at Apple's and Nintendo's controllers side-by-side:
Apple / Nintendo
Seriously? Seriously.
Pretty uncanny, no?
Similar to the Nintendo Wii's gamepad, the Apple TV remote has motion sensing technology built in. The first game shown during Apple's presentation was "Asphalt 8" - a motion-based racing game popular on mobile already.
Here's a look at the Apple TV remote in action:
Looks an awful lot like someone playing "Mario Kart Wii," the kart racing game starring Nintendo's all-stars, no? Except it isn't "Mario Kart." It's "Asphalt 8," which is a perfectly fine game, but is no "Mario Kart."
And that's why Apple TV, despite being an Apple product with a vast library of third-party apps and a relatively low price point ($150-$200), doesn't compete with even a 10-year-old home game console: it's not made by Nintendo and doesn't have Nintendo's long history of game making backing up the initiative.
Apple's great at making hardware and software that fits into your life. Nintendo's great at making video games. These two things are not the same.
People bought the Nintendo Wii for "Wii Sports," which came packed in with the console. People then bought "Super Mario Galaxy," and "Mario Kart Wii" and "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword" - Nintendo-created games. While the Wii was a comparatively underpowered system with an extremely basic gamepad (by gaming standards), Nintendo smartly made games tailored to its strengths.
Apple doesn't have that benefit.
Developer Limitations
On paper, Apple TV is a newer version of the Wii with a focus on media over gaming. In reality, Apple TV is a set-top box with mobile games. Even if Apple TV app developers wanted to make something really ambitious and made for living rooms, they'd hit Apple's 200MB imposed limit on games.
Oh, you didn't know? Apple TV apps have a hard limit of 200MB of usable storage. Here's Apple's developer fine print:
There is no persistent local storage for apps on Apple TV. This means that every app developed for the new Apple TV must be able to store data in iCloud and retrieve it in a way that provides a great customer experience. Along with the lack of local storage, the maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200MB. Anything beyond this size needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources.
Though the limit will surely increase over time, this means that - at launch in October - you're unlikely to play anything much larger than the light fare you've seen thus far: "Crossy Road" and "Rayman Adventures" and the like.
Anything bigger than 200MB "needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources" just means that you'd have to stream any additional content. That works fine if your app is Netflix. Not so much if you're making "Guitar Hero" for Apple TV.
The "Controller"
And what of that "gamepad" that comes with the Apple TV? Well, it's not a gamepad - it's a remote control with a touchpad at the top. This bit:
Apple
Games like "Crossy Road" work because the touchpad approximates the touchscreen on your phone/tablet. Games like "Asphalt 8" work because they approximate the motion control on your phone/tablet. But what about the trillions of other games that require more complex input in your living room? Any game that requires more than a single input method at any given time is going to have serious trouble being played without a third-party Bluetooth gamepad. Which, yeah, you have to buy separately. Of course.
Try and turn the Apple TV remote sideways like a Wii Remote and it becomes even more cumbersome. Imagine trying to use those center buttons to interact with a game! It'd be painful and frustrating and not worth your time.
Apple
Most importantly, the Apple TV remote wasn't built for gaming. A volume rocker isn't a stand-in for actual buttons, and the design isn't intended for use as a gamepad. Hell, even the wrist strap seen in images isn't included with Apple TV - it's a separate purchase (somewhat unbelievably). It's a standard remote control with a few workarounds that will work with already popular mobile games.
But Apple TV isn't a mobile device - it sits in your living room, next to your actual game consoles, and attempts to also do gaming. It's a starkly different approach than the console makers.
Sure, it'll be interesting to see how app developers work within these constraints. And sure, Apple TV has support for Bluetooth gamepads if you want to get more serious (with the handful of games that support Bluetooth gamepads). But don't expect Apple to step up to gaming with the proficiency of Nintendo, despite having a box that's shockingly similar to Nintendo's wildly popular Wii.