Apple is poised to begin its big push into the living room with a new version of its internet television box designed to challenge Sony and Microsoft with advanced gaming features, according to the New York Times. Cupertino’s foray into the console market is believed to focus on casual gamers — rather than those who prefer AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto — making the company’s entry somewhat more worrying for Nintendo than for Microsoft or Sony.
Apple’s iOS platform has become the de facto standard for casual mobile gaming, spawning a multi-billion dollar gaming sub-genre of its own. Shifting that momentum toward the Apple TV will encroach on turf recently dominated by Nintendo with its Wii and Wii U consoles. Electronic Arts and 3DO founder Trip Hawkins implied that Apple’s ability to make new technology useable for every consumer could be a major competitive advantage. “No company has done more for the digital man-machine interface than Apple,” Hawkins said. “They’ve warmed up to games and are a worthy candidate to win the family room in the next decade, though the competition and inertia are epic.”
Gaming aside, previous reports have indicated that Apple also plans to address content discovery in the updated Apple TV with a new “universal search” feature. Using Siri, consumers would be able to enter the name of a program and find out where they can watch it, from a number of providers like Netflix and iTunes.
Semiconductor industry sources also confirmed rumors that Apple has significantly increased the processing power of Apple TV to allow the use of complex graphics. It means the new device is predicted to cost much more than the current Apple TV, which sells for under £60.
As well as upgrading the device as a games console, Apple is believed to be working on a major challenge to pay-TV operators by creating its own bundle of streaming programming.
With the global games business currently worth US$75 billion – US$27 billion of which comes from console gaming – and a third of Apple’s revenue already coming from sales of games and other software purchased in its app stores, the new Apple TV could pave the way for Apple to become a major player in yet another tech arena.
