First of all, this is a thought that I
need to acknowledge is very biased, to
my own personal preferences, experiences,
and what I see in the world around me.
I don't have access to the data that
a company like Apple or Xbox or Epic
Games would so I can't speak with
any real intelligence or awareness
on what makes sense for a corporation.
Hopefully that's obvious, but just
to put that as a big caveat in front,
In our household there's three or four
video games that occupy the majority of
the time we spend, those of us who do play
video games spend, and in no particular
order, it would be Fortnite, Minecraft,
Marvel Rivals, and Roblox.
And my personal preference
of all of them is Fortnite.
There's a couple of similarities in all
these games, despite the very different
play styles and type of games they are.
They're all free to play.
You can buy in-game cosmetics
is the way that they make money.
Skins or shoes or backpacks et cetera.
But the gameplay itself is the
same for every single player in the
world, regardless of their wealth or
ability to buy things in the game.
The other commonality is that
they are all a single player,
local experience basically.
So if you want to play with your sibling
or someone in the same room as you, you
have to have more than one console or
computer it's not like playing a game of
NHL 25 where you can sit with up to four
or five people in a room and all have
a controller and play on one console.
Which brings me to the point of all of
this I feel like there's a big hole in
the market where someone could build
a hardware gaming device that's priced
below what a Switch 2 is, an Xbox
is PlayStation, and have support for
games like Roblox, Fortnite, Rivals,
and other freemium games like that.
Not necessarily top tier games that
have amazing cutting edge graphics, but
games that are just about on the edge.
And to me, a company like Apple
is positioned uniquely well
to do something like this.
They have the app store on the
iPhone where games, even fairly
cutting edge games are often released
day one or shortly thereafter, just
because of the size of the market
on iPhone and those same games
work really well on an iPad and can
theoretically work just as well on
a Mac computer and more importantly
on their Apple TV hardware devices.
And so I think Apple should
release a Apple TV hardware
gaming device of some sort.
Call it something like Apple gaming but
it would be priced above the regular
Apple TV hardware, which is already
expensive compared to other streaming
devices, but below the price of a Switch.
but powerful enough to run the Fortnite.
Marvel rivals, no Man Sky,
even Roblox, et cetera.
Apple's already built extensive support
for Xbox or PlayStation controllers, so
they don't have to worry about trying
to reinvent that part of the market.
But for a family with two or three
kids who all want to play these types
of games, Apple could be the go-to
device where it'll work as an Apple TV
streaming hardware for watching shows
on Netflix and Apple TV+, but also
work just as well for playing games.
I have to wonder if their years long
lawsuit fight with Epic Games has
distracted them from getting what
would've been one of the number one
games on their platform back on iPhone
iPad, Mac and Apple TV hardware even.
And while the lawsuit stuff is still
ongoing, it feels like there's maybe a
cooling of the intensity to where they
could work out some sort of arrangement.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Apple has a very long memory for
companies and individuals who go
against what they think is in their
best interests, especially if they do
it in a very public lawsuit sort of way.
In Canadian pricing, a
Switch is around $400.
Switch 2 will be around $600.
And so if Apple wanted to price something
at 300 Canadian, which is a hundred
dollars more than their current Apple
TV hardware, it feels like they've got
the chips GPUs and software ready to go.
They could put it out very easily and
have something on the market that would
be powerful enough to run all these games,
and effectively undercut a good portion
of the audience for these freemium games.