highframerate

YP101 said:

Well, Apple just buy Nintendo will solve the problem. Nintendo gets M1 CPU will resolve the current hardware limitation.
Apple will receive all retro games on Apple TV.

We went through this 5 years ago when people thought that NIntendo was dead (couldn't keep up with Microsoft and Sony in specs, their "family-friendly" focus meant losing out to the iPad etc.) so people claimed that Apple should buy Nintendo in order to bring the Mario, Zelda etc. games to the iPad and iPhone. Nintendo said: "We are not for sale and never will be" followed by "even if we are sold it will never be to a foreign company." 

As for Sony, yeah as if the antitrust regulators would allow that. It would give Apple:
A. a smartphone and tablet manufacturer (Android)
B. a TV (again Android), DVD and premium audio manufacturer 
C. the world's #1 gaming console platform
D. the Columbia movie studio (Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, Jumanji, Bad Boys, Karate Kid, Men In Black and a bunch of other franchises, and that doesn't even include Sony Japan's extensive film, TV, music etc. properties)

So the Japanese government is going to let the company that killed off the Walkman (and indirectly the Blu-Ray by creating the streaming era) and mobile gaming (seriously degrading Sony, Nintendo, Sega etc. in the process while creating a boom for competing Chinese and South Korean tech companies like Tencent, Xiaomi, LG and Samsung) buy Sony? Yeah, totally not going to happen. 

tomahawk said:

highframerate said:

techconc said:

This is the type of acquisition that Apple really needs to make.  Apple just doesn't get the gaming market or simply has no interest in it.  Small indie games in Apple Arcade are fine, but Apple's platforms need A list games.  Apple has great hardware with the M1 Max but a poor gaming selection.  Ironically, Mac sales are at record levels now, but gaming on the Mac is worse than any time in history.  Sad.  

The M1 Max is not "great hardware" for gaming because the GPU only performs between the level of an Nvidia 3060 and 3080, which are available in x86 machines that cost under $1000. Yes Mac sales are at record levels ... but at a market share (depending upon whether you believe Gartner, IDC, Canalys) that 7.5% to 8.6%, making it third in share behind Windows and ChromeOS. 

The only path into AAA gaming for Apple is to emulate Microsoft and create their own gaming console. The problem: the AAA console gaming market is in turmoil right now, which is precisely what Microsoft is taking advantage of by snapping up beleagured studios left and right. And - as I mentioned above - currently if you combine the efforts of Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and Amazon and you have 42-45 million cloud gaming subscriptions. It would take Apple 3 years at minimum to launch a console gaming platform; who knows how many cloud gaming subscribers there will be in that time. 

Apple doesn't need its own console.  Nintendo showed some time ago you don't have to have the best hardware or graphics to be successful.  Apple needs to figure out a way to bring some truly great games to the AppleTV and push that capability.  They also would need to market the platform as having that capability.  At this point Apple Arcade is an interesting concept, but I'd say their execution is lacking.  Do the same thing they're trying to do with AppleTV+, go get some content!

This should have been Apple.  They need to push having a few top games available on iOS, macOS and AppleTV.  They need to push low-cost controller availability, etc.  Make the AppleTV the family gaming platform, one that a lot of people already have in their home. Go for the market the Wii filled, and promote all of your subscriptions at the same time.

You state "Apple doesn't need its own console" and then you cite Nintendo ... which has its own console. The Nintendo Switch is a hybrid of two of the most popular console gaming hardware platforms of all time: the Wii and the DS. Without the massive success of the Wii and the operating system from the 3DS, the Switch wouldn't have had a chance. Nintendo also has what Apple does not have, which is an extensive list of their own gaming IP - Breath of the Wild was a launch title, plus Super Mario Odyssey, Smash Bros Ultimate, Animal Crossing and the venerable Mario Kart were key to its success - and a longrunning relationship with gaming studios. Apple has none of those things. 

Incidentally, you greatly overstate the number of Apple TV boxes in the wild. Apple TV is behind Roku, Tizen, Fire TV, lgOS and Android TV/Google TV and it isn't close. If it were, you would have more developers for Apple Arcade. The reason why Apple Arcade didn't take off is because it is between a rock and a hard place. Apple wants the combination of iPhone, iPad and Apple TV to push at least PS4-caliber games. (Whether the Apple TV is even capable of 4K games at high refresh rates is debatable. It is likely capable of either 1080p games at high refresh rates or 4K games at low ones.)
Two problems.
1. There is no evidence that AAA gamers want PS4-caliber games. They want the latest games running at the most powerful specs, which means 8K with ray tracing etc.
2. iPad/iPhone gaming is primarily touchscreen. Apple TV requires controllers. The largest audience of gamers - by far - is iPad but the AAA gaming experience requires targeting the device with a very small market share (Apple TV) with the ideal version of the game while still making the iPad and iPhone versions high quality. That is a challenge that AAA developers for no other platform but Nintendo have to worry about, and again Nintendo's partners have been developing games for the DS and Gameboy for decades. 

And for the reasons that I have stated, no this shouldn't be Apple. Apple doesn't have a platform capable of running Activision Blizzard games. Microsoft has two of them: Windows and PlayStation. And no, buying Activision Blizzard won't cause a stampede of people to run out and buy MacBook Airs or Apple TVs to game on because that is still just one content library from one studio. It would be the equivalent of - for example - Amazon trying to build a streaming service with only the MGM library. 

techconc said:

This is the type of acquisition that Apple really needs to make.  Apple just doesn't get the gaming market or simply has no interest in it.  Small indie games in Apple Arcade are fine, but Apple's platforms need A list games.  Apple has great hardware with the M1 Max but a poor gaming selection.  Ironically, Mac sales are at record levels now, but gaming on the Mac is worse than any time in history.  Sad.  

The M1 Max is not "great hardware" for gaming because the GPU only performs between the level of an Nvidia 3060 and 3080, which are available in x86 machines that cost under $1000. Yes Mac sales are at record levels ... but at a market share (depending upon whether you believe Gartner, IDC, Canalys) that 7.5% to 8.6%, making it third in share behind Windows and ChromeOS. 

The only path into AAA gaming for Apple is to emulate Microsoft and create their own gaming console. The problem: the AAA console gaming market is in turmoil right now, which is precisely what Microsoft is taking advantage of by snapping up beleagured studios left and right. And - as I mentioned above - currently if you combine the efforts of Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and Amazon and you have 42-45 million cloud gaming subscriptions. It would take Apple 3 years at minimum to launch a console gaming platform; who knows how many cloud gaming subscribers there will be in that time. 

When Google and Microsoft first launched Stadia and xCloud and were not allowed to put their apps in the app store, an Apple Insider pooh-poohed the development stating "cloud gaming is going to fail anyway." Well now xCloud alone has 25 million subscribers. Nvidia GeForce Now had 12 million subscribers at last count. And at last report - which was way back in 1Q 2020 - Amazon Luna and Google Stadia had 2.5 million subscribers apiece. (Plus you can simply buy Stadia games without bothering with a subscription.) By comparison the streaming service Hulu has 43 million subscribers, and in mid-July Apple TV+ was estimated to have less than 20 million subscribers (which Apple does not dispute, and they state that they HOPE to have 36 million subscribers in 2026!). 

Not saying that Apple should have allowed game streaming apps into their app store. But the idea "who cares: game streaming isn't going to catch on anyway" was a very bad take. If Microsoft wasn't happy with the initial response to xCloud, there is no way that they would have doubled down by spending $70 billion on Activision Blizzard. And no, the antitrust types aren't going to block it.