Why hasn't Apple dived into the console business?

[Rick Dangerous]

The pippin and apple TV aside, why hasn't Apple made a full fledges attempt at launching a dedicated gaming console? They could cater to casual gamers with versions of popular Apps from the APP store, as well as hardcore gamers with games from the App store as well as new content.

 

They are a bigger company than Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, with a ton of money to dump into R&D and marketing. It would probably be a generation or two before they were profitable, but with such a big industry that isn't going away, i'm surprised they haven't jumped in.

 

Why do you think apple hasn't bothered with a gaming console in the modern era?

[akator]

They're already making an enormous amount of money from gaming without dedicated gaming hardware. They get a healthy cut from every app store transaction. Developers pay Apple both for dev software and hardware.

 

From Apple's point of view, they're already one of the richest companies in the world and have more money than most countries. Their current model is clearly working so why should they change it?

[Rick Dangerous]

From Apple's point of view, they're already one of the richest companies in the world and have more money than most countries. Their current model is clearly working so why should they change it?

 

I think the answer would be "to make more money." Which they could theoretically do in force if they spent the time, money and energy to do a console right and crush a few competitors who are lets be honest poised for a good crushing.

 

I'm not saying I want Apple to enter the market, or want Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft to exit, but i'm interested in their decision not to given the lucrative home console market (for winning consoles) and their capital and resources available to make it happen.

[MrMaddog]

They could have been if you've seen games like Inifinty Blade and Real Racing 2. Apple could have marketed the iPhone as a gaming handheld that used touch & motion controls and play the same games on Apple TV using the iOS device as a controller. In fact they could have bundled an iPod Touch with an Apple TV to create a Wii killer for the causual gamer market.

 

But...people would rather get freemium games and only pay for IAP's instead of a straight price for the whole game. (nevermind the added cost of IAP's are more than a five dollar game)

 

So iOS is mainly used for quick bouts of gaming on the go instead of being a serious portable gaming platform long before the Nintendo Switch came out...

 

As for Apple TV, it's still marketed as a streaming device rather than a microconsole for gaming. Especially since there's no bundling of a gamepad, which cost $100 and only made by 3rd parties, why would anyone use Apple TV for gaming?

[spacecadet]

I think that unless they do something like make some weird Switch-like thing based on the iPad, it would probably just conflict with their other product lines a little too much. They want you to be buying games on the iTunes store and playing them on your iPhone/iPad.

 

Also, this may be hard to swallow given how big they are, but they're just not very good at gaming. They've tried it, repeatedly. They suck at it; they don't have any idea what they're doing. Every time they've tried making a big splash in gaming, be it the Pippin or some new DirectX-like feature in MacOS or including gaming cards in the iMac or whatever, they end up screwing it up somehow and then they forget about it in six months. And everybody knows that about them now, so nobody really takes them seriously anymore when they talk about gaming.

 

You can say they have billions of dollars, why can't they just hire some people who know about gaming, but the problem is that it has to come from the top. If Tim Cook (or Steve Jobs, or Gil Amelio or whoever) doesn't know anything about gaming, he's not going to have any friggin' clue what he's even greenlighting or even what kind of overall direction to give. And sure, he could say "here's some money, just go with what you know, let me know how it turns out", which is basically what Bill Gates did, but does that really seem like Tim Cook's style? I mean he came up with Steve Jobs, who most definitely did not operate that way, and if anything Cook seems to have made Apple more conservative, not less.

 

I think at a certain point Apple probably looked at their record in gaming and said "screw it, we make enough money as it is, let's just stick with what we know". Now they seem to just try to make their stuff powerful enough to play games, but they barely even mention them because whenever they have in the past, they've gotten burned for it later. It's just not really their forte.

[ZylonBane]

Why do you think apple hasn't bothered with a gaming console in the modern era?

 

Because Apple is not and has never been a game company. You may as well ask why IBM or Linksys hasn't made a game console.

 

What a silly thread.

[Rick Dangerous]

 

Because Apple is not and has never been a game company. You may as well ask why IBM or Linksys hasn't made a game console.

 

What a silly thread.

 

Seems to me like there have always been games on Apple Computers. With the App store Apple is now one of the biggest "game companies" in the world.

 

Was Microsoft a game company before the Xbox was release? Was Sony before the PS1?

 

What a silly reply.

[Flojomojo]

Making "AAA" games is expensive, risky, and time consuming. Why should they bother? They take 30% of App Store revenues and they sell lots of devices. Why wade into the crowded red ocean with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo?

 

Google and Amazon are taking a similar safe approach.

 

Unlike Amazon and Netflix, Apple doesn't produce original shows or movies, either. That's OK.

 

I like iOS games, especially when they're quirky and weird. Indie games are great. I don't need Apple's big feet in there any more than what we see in the Featured section of the game store. That work is more important than it looks and arguably just as influential as any call of duty stuff. I think Matt Cassamania formerly of IGN is an editor/curator in the App Store.

 

AppleTV could be so much more ...but note they're also going slow on their TV streaming features and tying things together.

[+wongojack]

They better make something else soon. The only thing they really make a lot of money on is the phone, and iPad sales are dropping.

[Flojomojo]

They still sell craploads of iPhones. Don't worry about them.

[godslabrat]

Game consoles are typically sold at low or even negative margins. Apple doesn't like to do loss leaders. They frequently leave large segments of demand unfilled because they don't deem the profit to be made as worth it (example: headless iMac, sub-$300 iPhone)

 

Apple would want to tackle the console market the way 3do did, and they're smart enough to see where that would head.

[Tanooki]

^Beat me to it by a couple hours. Apple isn't that stupid, that's why. Outside of Nintendo that lives in their own little world of breaking even on their hardware, video game consoles are multi hundred dollar per unit at times loss leaders. You'd have to be insane to get into it with already MS in there with Sony, there's no room. Apple sort of is in it with some of their stuff since you can cast various apple products to a big screen to game with a bluetooth controller much like Android. They have no loss in doing that, it's jsut another iOS box that runs apps to them. All the loss falls on the game and other app makers, they get their licensing cut end of story there. For Apple to get in one of others would have to get out, or get gimped further by them becoming more PC like, they need a hit so Apple could weasel in and profit pretty fast from things to consider it and that just isn't happening. The market really has enough room for just 2 who deliever same style service, Nintendo does their own thing having gone handheld only with a microconsole basically with an android core at its heart. They got out and went where they can make money. Apple is already kind of in that realm with the gaming apps people make.

[spacecadet]

I will say that Apple's early history *was* in large part due to gaming, and clearly they've tried to restart that several times since then, so I think blanket statements like "Apple's not a gaming company" are a little dismissive. The problem is just the current administration, which is a continuation, more or less, of the previous administration. Jobs wasn't the gaming guy in the early days; Woz kinda was, in that he at least understood it. And Apple owed a lot of their early success to that, and *losing* that market is a big part of why the Mac was a failure for so long. And that explains why at various points Apple tried to attract gamers again, but by then they'd totally lost that plot and they've never gotten it back. They just don't have people who know what it's about, and my guess is that guys like Jony Ive look at gaming products and actually think they're the antithesis of what he stands for.

 

Tim Cook will not be around forever and you can never say never when it comes to technology... the next CEO might have more of a gaming background. And he/she would have a legitimate argument that gaming is taking Apple back to its roots. But Tim Cook is not an old-school Apple guy and even Steve Jobs was only maybe a third of what made Apple successful in those days (Woz being another third, everyone else being the final third). So as long as he's around, you can't expect Apple to make any big push into gaming.

[high voltage]

Apple has 6% of the PC market in the world. Apple consoles wouldn't do better.

Edited March 5, 2017 by high voltage

[+Sauron]

Apple builds "boutique" hardware. Building a boutique gaming console would be pointless, as there has never been much of a market for it, and probably never will be. It just doesn't fit into their business model, plain and simple.

[cd-w]

They tried it before with the "apple bandai pippin" console - it didn't work out well ...

[DracIsBack]

They tried it before with the "apple bandai pippin" console - it didn't work out well ...

 

to be honest, I had high expectations for the Apple TV Fourth Generation being the precursor to an Apple console too. That hasn't worked out well either.

 

I'm honestly surprised at how many journalists turn a blind eye to the friggen app gap on that thing.

[Flojomojo]

to be honest, I had high expectations for the Apple TV Fourth Generation being the precursor to an Apple console too. That hasn't worked out well either.

 

I think it's fun as a party box though. It's neat for what it is.

 

Steppy Pants, Dashy Crashy, Handbrake Valet, Pac-Man 256, Faily Brakes, Crossy Road and probably others I've forgotten are like an arcade genre unto themselves. If these had been Activision concepts in the early 80s, they would be considered classics today. They're not exactly system sellers, but if you have the machine anyway, they're fun.

 

And Horizon Chase is just awesome. It's how I imagined 3DO M2 games were supposed to look.

[Mord]

The pippin and apple TV aside, why hasn't Apple made a full fledges attempt at launching a dedicated gaming console?

 

Probably because they don't think the average gamer will pay 900 bucks for a console that they'll need to trade in every couple years for a newer model.

[carlsson]

Was Microsoft a game company before the Xbox was release? Was Sony before the PS1?

Microsoft did launch games like the Flight Simulator which for some years was used as a benchmark to tell IBM PC compatibles and clones apart. Sony were onto the MSX bandwagon and released a bunch of games for that one, although most seem to have been Konami's leftovers they didn't want to market under their own brand so Sony got the opportunity.

[Gentlegamer]

Are you saying we need an Xbox with Apple OS for $2000 more?

[zzip]

 

Because Apple is not and has never been a game company. You may as well ask why IBM or Linksys hasn't made a game console.

 

What a silly thread.

 

Neither was Sony or Microsoft (not really) when they entered

[zzip]

^Beat me to it by a couple hours. Apple isn't that stupid, that's why. Outside of Nintendo that lives in their own little world of breaking even on their hardware, video game consoles are multi hundred dollar per unit at times loss leaders. You'd have to be insane to get into it with already MS in there with Sony, there's no room. Apple sort of is in it with some of their stuff since you can cast various apple products to a big screen to game with a bluetooth controller much like Android. They have no loss in doing that, it's jsut another iOS box that runs apps to them. All the loss falls on the game and other app makers, they get their licensing cut end of story there. For Apple to get in one of others would have to get out, or get gimped further by them becoming more PC like, they need a hit so Apple could weasel in and profit pretty fast from things to consider it and that just isn't happening. The market really has enough room for just 2 who deliever same style service, Nintendo does their own thing having gone handheld only with a microconsole basically with an android core at its heart. They got out and went where they can make money. Apple is already kind of in that realm with the gaming apps people make.

 

MS looks vulnerable this generation though. With a bunch of cancelled games, moving exclusives on PC, relying on the same 3 franchises year after year and making a number of missteps, the market seems ripe for someone to step in and eat their lunch. It has to be someone with deep pockets though to build a gaming ecosystem to rival Sony

[Flojomojo]

Neither was Sony or Microsoft (not really) when they entered

 

 

I beg to differ. History, son:

 

Sony was a hardware partner with Nintendo and the PlayStation is a direct descendant of the unreleased Super Nintendo CD-ROM. Without that partnership, you have no Ken Kutaragi, and without him, you have no PlayStation division.

 

Microsoft's DirectX is the main reason Windows PCs is the premier platform for open games development. It's completely natural for Microsoft to leverage that into a walled-garden of a game-playing box, where they could control the publication and production.

 

All these companies are intertwined. Apple's Steve Jobs worked at Atari, Steve Wozniak worked at Hewlett-Packard. Why doesn't anyone ask why HP doesn't make a game console? Oh wait, they do.

 

Apple has plenty of game consoles.

Here's a handheld one for $199

Their TV console starts at $149

They can all use traditional controllers, too.

[Flojomojo]

MS looks vulnerable this generation though. With a bunch of cancelled games, moving exclusives on PC, relying on the same 3 franchises year after year and making a number of missteps, the market seems ripe for someone to step in and eat their lunch. It has to be someone with deep pockets though to build a gaming ecosystem to rival Sony

If they did that, they'd have to close their cute little retail stores that also showcase their Surface products, because Xbox stuff is the only thing you can buy there for less than $400.

 

Tell me this: if Microsoft can't make it in this competitive, low-margin market, who is the "someone" who can? Note that the Xbox division's Q1 FY17 revenues were only down by 5%, which would not be sky-is-falling territory for me.