Excited about the new Apple TV?

Mantas has said in the below thread that he believes RC builds can be downloaded by anyone (unlike earlier beta builds which are pro only). I have pro so I can't verify.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/official-unity-for-apple-tv-open-beta.371324/

 

Yes, I shall clarify. It's 5.3.x, not 5.3.0. That's what the plan is, anyway!

my bad, not yet

a unity flash game... how pointless. The only reason to use that technology now is if you're targeting internet explorer 8 and below.

 

5.3.1 is out now, so it it is currently live and out of beta.

 

That's a whole bowl of noodles

 

Apps are the future of TV. Think about it. On your mobile devices and computers, you already use apps like Netflix, Watch ESPN, and iTunes to look at TV shows. And that is exactly where TV in the living room is headed. Apps have liberated TV.They permit you to make individual selections regarding what you would like to observe. With the new Apple TV and its powerful new TVOS, developers are creating experiences that will change what you expect from your huge screen,making your TV feel as personal as your iPhone or iPad.

 

For me I've really lost my enthusiasm for AppleTV. I was excited at first believing the Apple hype that it was going to be a revolution and all that. The reality is, there's only a handful of new games added each week and most of them are pretty poor, half of them are direct ports of low-poly mobile games that aren't even remotely suitable to a big screen tv, and only occasionally is there anything added that's worth playing. There just isn't hardly anything that's actually EXCITING.It's all very safe and ordinary and sort of.. for kids.

AppleTV has unfortunately stayed mainly as another shovelware outlet for itunes and other content, with various tv channels trying to get their content on there. Occasionally that's useful for watching a movie or whatever. But even of the games that I paid for (several) there's only 1 or 2 that I felt were really worth playing more than a few times. The wow and excitement and innovation just isn't there. Most of the apps are fluff or very basic. Its become kind of a dumping ground for games that already had major success on iOs and they thought they'd just throw it onto AppleTV for kicks and a vast majority of new stuff is basic ameteur junk.

The choice of making the default controller a non-gaming movie-watching controller is really a kick in the teeth of seeing it as a 'game console'. The whole system kind of feels like a bit of an oddball toy, quirky, not quite a fit for games. It's more like a tv-top box thing which... oh, by the way, it also has a few quirky games on it. Very secondary. The whole idea of apps revolutionizing tv... well.. if you could get on-demand programs whenever you like, that'd be something. But it's still all focused around `live tv` ie station-controlled program timing. Not exactly a revolution. The on-demand content IS nice, what there is of it... and netflix, yah nice, and youtube, nice.. and then.. its business as usual.

The top charts are dominated by tv channels rather than hit games. There's so few good games that the highest ranked new games are usually not even that good and it leaves you wondering like, is that all there is? Is that really the best of the best right now? The user interface is all like nice and clean and obvious and scrolly and all that, but.. like... where's the character, personality, and wow factor? Everything has kind of a shiny plasticy design to it like it's trying to be a regular audiovisual device instead of a standout device with its own identity. I really feel that's where AppleTV lacks the most.. besides the Apple fan support it just doesn't have much of an identity of its own - some really unique fantastic games and apps that draw you to it. The hype is way bigger than the reality. It's nice, it's sort of cool, but it's really not doing it for me in the way it seemed it might. Is it a device that people go to first or second to put their amazing new game on? Are people making games JUST for it or targeting it first? Nope. Not really. Could you make a living off sales of a game on there, even a hit game that's highly featured? Probably not.

 

I'd agree with your sentiments that it's not a game changer, if that was anyone's expectation going in it certainly didn't meet it. As far as market share goes, it's still lagging behind the fire tv but because of the reputation of Apple the App store is growing at a quicker rate than Amazon's. In the future I would expect it to be comparable in number of units if they can get the price down.

I'd view both of those places though currently as just a testing ground though, they lack enough gamers to make you a smash hit, but they are small enough to avoid saturation. To be honest if I was making a mobile game currently I would target both of those platforms first to get user feedback and polish the game because I wouldn't have to spend any marketing dollars and then when the game was great and getting good reviews I would then publish to IOS and Android and spend some money on marketing when I knew the game would be successful.