Xbox Founding Engineer Says Apple TV Could Destroy Console Gaming with Third-Party Apps
Earlier this month, we highlighted some comments from Valve founder Gabe Newell noting his view that Apple had the potential to take over the traditional gaming market by leveraging its existing ecosystem to deliver a "dumbed down living room platform" more quickly and efficiently than others can transition from the console to streaming via PC as Newell believes is the future.
Nat Brown, one of the first engineers to join the Xbox project back in 1999, has now published a blog post offering similar thoughts in noting the Microsoft is missing out on a major opportunity by not opening up that platform to small developers, an issue that Apple could easily exploit to gain tremendous momentum in the home gaming market.
Why can’t I write a game for xBox tomorrow using $100 worth of tools and my existing Windows laptop and test it on my home xBox or at my friends’ houses? Why can’t I then distribute it digitally in a decent online store, give up a 30% cut and strike it rich if it’s a great game, like I can for Android, for iPhone, or for iPad?
Brown notes that the terms of the Xbox developer program are so onerous that it is essentially impossible for an independent developer to succeed on the platform.
Brown also believes that the user experience on the Xbox platform leaves much to be desired, with Apple's emphasis on simplicity giving it an advantage with users.
Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill Playstation, Wii-U and xBox by introducing an open 30%-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple-TV. I already make a lot of money on iOS – I will be the first to write apps for Apple-TV when I can, and I know I’ll make money. I would for xBox if I could and I knew I would make money. Maybe a “console-capable” Apple-TV isn’t $99, maybe it’s $199, and add another $79 for a controller. The current numbers already say a lot, even with Apple-TV not already an open console: 5.3M sold units in 2012, 90% year-over-year growth — vs. xBox 360 — about 9M units in 2012, 60% YoY decline.
Just today, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek claimed that Apple will be holding a TV-related special event next month, speculating that the company could announce developer tools for the Apple TV platform to set the stage for a full television set product later this year.
Popular Stories
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
Heres a powervr sgx 545 (apple tv has a 543) vs an intel hd4000 which itself is much slower than the xbox class graphics.
An Apple "TV" that is capable of competing with Microsoft's XBox would NOT be worth $100. Keep dreaming.
"It's a phone, an internet device, and an iPod. iPhone." - 2007
Its a streaming set-top box, a gaming console, and a live Television. Apple TV." - 2013