Apple does console? Logical

Since 1972, the console wars have been fought for eight generations, each accompanied by fierce competition among the giants. From the arcade wars set off by Atari, to the home console wars set off by Nintendo and Sega, to the handheld era dominated by Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. Every time the console is replaced, it triggers a technical and creative reshuffle in the entire game industry.

Today, atari, NEC, Sega and other former overlords have withdrawn from the console market, only Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo three giants still have the ability to design and operate consoles, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo game consoles naturally occupy the supreme position in today's game industry. As the number of new players gradually decreased, the console market seems to have become a closed club, and only Ren Suo soft three are eligible to enter.

Apple seems to be trying to change that, though. On the South Korean forum Clin, a whistleblower posted that according to the news provided by the Taiwan supply chain, Apple is trying to investigate the feasibility of entering the game console market by hiring an external consulting agency, and is also developing/producing a chip that specializes in powering game consoles, and strives to enter the game console market again.

Although the news about Apple's game console at this stage is still speculative, there are traces to be followed when you think about it carefully. Whether it is in chip design or in the accumulation of supply chain management, Apple seems to have long had the ability to produce special game devices, and all that remains is to solve ecological problems. The question is, why should Apple enter the game console market, and can Apple game console stand out?

Apple's game dream

Whether this news is true or not, Apple's relationship with the game has actually been around for a long time.

To talk about the origins of Apple and games, we may have to start with Apple founder Steve Jobs. Everyone knows that Jobs was the genius who made Apple a tech giant, but Jobs himself wasn't born apple's CEO. According to relevant information, after dropping out of Reed College, the 18-year-old Jobs was hired by the game legend Al Al Alcon (famous for creating "Pong") to become Atari's No. 40 employee.

At that time, Atari was a well-deserved giant in the American game industry, from arcade to game consoles, and the world's first arcade video game "Pong" was the source of their success. After joining Atari, Jobs and Wozniak, another co-founder of Apple, worked together on BreakOut, a game in which players operate a board to bounce spheres to destroy a series of bricks at the top of the screen, the familiar "Bricks" today.

(Gameplay footage for a remake of Super BreakOut)

Atari's brief experience in game development helped Jobs open the door to technology and business. The next story is that Jobs and Wozniak in their spare time to figuring out the world's first personal computer Apple I, after inviting Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell to invest was rejected, chose to leave Atari and found Apple Computer.

Interestingly, in apple's long history, there has really been a game console. At the end of the twentieth century, during the period of Jobs's exodus and Apple's decline, Apple launched some tentative products in an attempt to save itself, and even cooperated with The Japanese toy manufacturer and game developer Bandai to launch a game console called Apple Pippin.

According to Apple, Apple Pippin is an unconventional product. Unlike consoles at the time, Apple Pippin could not only play games, but also play multimedia files, do simple file processing, and even wear the hat of an educational tool. However, the high $599 pricing and the small number of games combined led to the product's failure. After Jobs returned, Pippin's product line was cut immediately.

Perhaps because of the impact of Pippen's failure, in the following years, Apple never mentioned the layout of the game industry. It wasn't until 2019, when Apple launched apple arcade, a game subscription service at its spring conference, that dusty memory was revealed again, and Apple seemed to have rekindled its ambition to enter the game industry.

Apple Arcade is a very typical game subscription service, like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, where users can enjoy all the games on the Arcade platform for as little as $4.99 a month. These games have no ads, in-app purchases, are completely free, and can be played on Apple's macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS platforms.

At the press conference, Apple also specially introduced exclusive games from SEGA, Gameloft, Disney and other well-known studios. Although these so-called exclusives are only "limited time exclusives", there are indeed a number of good game titles on Apple Arcade. Apple's accumulation of market coverage, coupled with hundreds of Apple-reviewed games, May make Apple Console a promising gaming platform.

Turn your Apple TV into a game console

As mentioned above, Apple and the gaming industry already have a lot of roots, so it's not impossible to regroup today. Of course, more people may pay attention to what kind of game console Apple can finally come up with than the antecedents.

Judging from the breaking news, there may be two versions of apple game consoles currently circulating on the market. According to Windows Central's reporter Jez Corden, Apple is likely to be developing a portable game console product similar to the Switch, and the product will be equipped with a new Apple's self-developed chip, not the known A series or M series chips.

From the rendering provided by netizens, this Apple portable game console is a game phone based on the iPhone 13, in addition to two shoulder buttons, the machine also sets a touch button at the top and bottom, the feel is similar to the Magic Joy button on the Apple TV remote control, allowing game developers to develop a unique operation plan according to the characteristics of the game.

On the other hand, there is also news that Apple is not interested in launching a game console, and they may directly integrate the newly designed game chip into the Apple TV, and then design a gamepad for it that meets the requirements of Arcade games, rather than launching a separate device.

In fact, this is also the most realistic speculation at present. Last March, Apple added support for the latest PlayStation 5 DualSense and Xbox Series X controllers to the tvOS 14.5 update, which can be used to play games from the tvOS App Store and Apple Arcade. Apple clearly wants apple TV not just to be a tool to watch movies, series, listen to music or other content, but also to knock on the door of the game industry itself.

How does Apple stand out?

For Apple, they have good reason to push the project forward. On the one hand, in recent years, the global mobile phone market is shrinking sharply, and Apple's iPhone has reached a bottleneck in sales. Although the iPhone 13 series has soared in the domestic market, the overall global sales volume is still showing a downward trend, and the latest iPhone SE 2022 was once rumored to reduce supplier orders because of the expected poor sales.

On the other hand, a report by market research agency Sensor Tower shows that Apple's App Store reached $41.5 billion in revenue in the first half of last year, of which the game business revenue accounted for 26 billion, accounting for more than 60% of the share, once surpassing the combined profits of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Activision Blizzard. The good income prospects also pave the way for Apple's entry.

The question is what Apple consoles should do to stand out in the global console market with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo on their three feet. Personally, if Apple wants to re-enter the console market and build a stable gaming platform, it must meet the following conditions:

First of all, excellent product performance. At present, the game consoles on the market, in addition to the maverick Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles are comparing product performance with each other, and whether they can achieve 4K/120Hz next-generation game experience has become the first requirement for many players. However, judging from the good performance of Apple's self-developed chips, we may not have to worry too much about hardware performance.

Second, the game lineup is crucial. You know, players still play games rather than hardware, even if Apple launches a game console that can hang play PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, without good game support, it will still become a failure. The problem is that from the current development of Apple Arcade, Apple's attractiveness to third-party game manufacturers is obviously not as good as Yusanjia, and how to improve the quality of first-party/third-party games will become the key to Apple's game consoles.

Finally, there must be reasonable pricing. At present, the latest next-generation game consoles on the market are generally priced at about 3500 yuan, which is much cheaper than the same grade of game computers. If Apple follows the convention and sets the price of the product at 7,000-8,000 yuan as soon as it comes up, then in the absence of a heavyweight exclusive game, the final result can be imagined naturally.

To sum up, if Apple wants to return to the game console market, it is inevitable to compete head-on with the Imperial Three. No matter how good the final hardware configuration of this console is, in the case that the first-party game is not as good as Sony and Nintendo, and the game subscription service is not as good as Microsoft, in addition to burning money to fight a "price war", Apple wants to gain a foothold in the game console market.