Cult of Mac:
Apple TV may have a new competitor in the form of Sony, which unveiled its PlayStation TV at Monday’s E3 event — showcasing a TV set-top box which features a strong emphasis on gaming.
Released as PS Vita TV in Japan, PlayStation TV will arrive in the U.S. and Canada this fall. It will allow users to stream games from their PS4 to other TVs in the house, thereby extending the gaming experience. It will also let you stream PS3 games and older classics via the forthcoming Playstation Now, which will presumably require no PS4. On top of this it will provide all the streaming services you’d expect from a set-top box, such as Netflix and Hulu.
I just can’t see this succeeding in the mainstream consumer market. Sony’s brand just doesn’t have the same relevance, same strength as it used to have. I can see Sony getting some traction with console gamers, but they’ll still have to battle Apple, Google, and now Amazon for even that mindshare.
99$ for PS TV isn’t that expensive considering a single game ranges between 40-90$. So its not completely out of the question for customers to own both, tis unlike 500$+ smartphones that require data plans.
I think the jury is out on whether it’ll be able to hit Apple TV like sellthrough, but I would not underestimate its success among the Playstation fans. Its not only a client for streaming the entire Playstation Now! catalog (which is a huge competitive advantage) but like the PS Vita it’s a client to stream from your PS4, so you can buy one console and have it playable in any room in your house. The PS Vita, while it struggled out of the gate and still does to varying degrees, is seeing a fair amount of success as a remote play device.
I swore for some time I’d never buy a dedicated gaming portable again, but the ability to play my PS4 from a Vita while lounging in bed is certainly appealing, particularly given that game state is shared between each.
Couldn’t they just build a PlayStation 2 in a tiny, convenient set-top, with disc replaced by online (both for games and video content) for $99? That would make me consider buying a Sony set-top.
The games on an iPad or iPhone are a few bucks each, and there are something like 20 iOS devices for every game console in the world, and that’s adding all the Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft game consoles together.
So the people who are willing to pay $40–$90 for a game have already all bought a game console. They are such a small number that they don’t make a good market for a mainstream TV set-top solution.
Yeah, but the games while much improved over the years still often leave much to be desired in regard to control. If Apple has an official controller with a more game-friendly Apple TV that’s one thing.
The other is that Playstation Now is arguably the best deal in gaming. People have shown they love subscriptions for Music and Movies, why not Games? Playstation Plus also gives you ~3-5 free PS3, PS4, and PS Vita games per month.
It’s a pretty compelling package from a value standpoint.
Sony’s core gamer base may be a larger niche, and we’ll see if it can expand to the broader gamer market that has come about with iOS and Android with devices like this, but their core is also loyal and spends money.
The R&D cost for the Vita TV aren’t nearly as bad as say Amazon’s for the Fire TV. fitting the Vita logic board into a plastic box is relatively trivial.
Sony doesn’t need to beat the Apple TV, just make money.
This isn’t really a challenge at all. None of them are. Because everyone of these boxes is ecosystem specific. Thus a user could have two or more of them at the same time for various reasons
I think that much like the Apple TV was (and still is to a degree) an accessory for a Mac or iOS device, the PSTV will be marketed more as an accessory for the PS4/PS Vita ecosystem. Perhaps in the future it will take off as something more standalone.
The Apple TV is still more an accessory for the iTunes, Mac, iOS ecosystem than it’s own streaming solution.
My PS4 (and PS3 to a degree) has replaced the Apple TV for most of my streaming needs. Netflix, Hulu Plus, and HBO GO on those systems just look and interact so much better than the Apple TV’s weird UI kit. Still, the Apple TV still gets a ton of use playing my iTunes music library and iTunes Radio on my nice 5.1 surround sound system, playing iTunes movies or shows I buy, YouTube viewing in a group over AirPlay, and the occasional AirPlay screen for my MacBook.
I think the PS TV will have a similar standing in the ecosystem and likely will have a similar “pickup time” to reach critical mass. PS Now and Remote Play have done way too much to drive PS Vita sales. Half my group of friends bought a PS VITA just to play Final Fantasy XIV via Remote Play on it. So don’t underestimate those two features either.
But if you think about it, what you’re saying is you’ll buy a $500 device and hook it up to a TV in your living room, then buy a $99 device and hook it to a TV in your bedroom, to play lower-quality network-streamed games from your bed, when you could buy a $299 iPad mini that doesn’t need a TV and can play high-quality native games not only in bed, but anywhere that you are.
The whole point of the game consoles is you pay a lot more, you give up mobility, but you get super high-quality graphics that are even better than an iPad. If you compress the display of the game consoles and send it over a network, then you get much lower-quality graphics than an iPad. But you still paid a lot of money and gave up mobility.
And an accessory for a game console will not sell in mainstream numbers, because there are so few game console owners. If there were no iPads or iPhones, then iPod touch by itself would still outnumber all the game consoles put together. And iPod touch is the lowest selling iOS device.
Mobility is basically the key feature of any 21st century device. The majority of Macs have been notebooks since about 1999, when Apple shipped the first consumer Wi-Fi base station. And Apple has been basically alone in game-changing technologies during the 21st century because they did the mobile iPod, mobile iPhone, and mobile iPad. Outside of Apple, the only real success story is the giant number of cheap mobile phones, that dwarf all other technologies in number. So I am really skeptical of anything that is not mobile. Apple TV might be an exception because its primary purpose is to attach your existing TV to the mobile world of iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Wi-Fi. Apple TV is just an adapter of sorts.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the argument that a PS4 is required, I’d read into these devices a little more. You do not need a PS4 for Playstation Now! service (hell it’s coming built into Sony TVs, though if they were smart they’d get it into other brands too), nor do you need one to buy games off of the PSN of which there is no shortage of PS1 and PS2 classics as well as PSN Games for nominal pricess typically ranging from $4.99 – $14.99. Some games are also on the iOS store, but likely play better with the controls on an actual console.
Sony is also starting to push Universal PSN titles where buying one version will get you the Vita, PS3, and PS4 versions in one shot.
Regarding Remote Play, I suggest you give it a shot before damning it. Like AirPlay, it’s actually pretty solid and to varying extents people are even able to play their PS4’s remotely over their internet connection which is saying something. The service supports some ~1000 Playstation (1-3) titles already, so I think the jury is still out before saying this won’t be compelling to gamers.
Just like Apple doesn’t have to own the entire PC market to be successful, Sony can also be successful by going after the core gamers and trying to expand outward. We’ll see if they hit snags, but again the jury is still out IMO and a lot of the commentary from the Apple community (of which I’m a member) is overlooking the very promising (and in the PS4’s case, very successful in the market) platform Sony’s building up among their devices.
Also, seriously look up Playstation Plus. It’s straight up free games every month and it’s an amazing deal. You can probably go quite a while without even buying a game outside of the free ones available.
If I had a PS4, this would be an impulse buy for me.
Why does it have to be an official controllers, what makes that better than an unofficial one made with Apple’s blessing and using Apple provided info to make sure it works.
And why do the games have to be on the Apple TV. On something like an iPad and mirrored to any ATV is the best of both worlds in many ways. As given the not verbalized hint of a port of the 3d Plants v Zombies who knows what else we might see in the coming months. Although something tells me that Nintendo won’t give in on their classic titles even if they should
Third party accessories ultimately never matter. They are never as good as a bundled first party accessory, and this has been true for all of gaming’s history. The third party controllers for iOS devices haven’t changed this tradition – they are all pretty crappy and largely unsupported by most iOS games. Without Apple showing support you’re very hard pressed to change the market much to support more involved gaming experiences because the devices get no traction by either users or developers – this is why Microsoft fought so hard to include Kinect with the Xbox One (and folded recently because Sony was eating their lunch).
Touch does a lot of nice things, but there are some things it simply can’t do. The first person games on iOS are a joke compared to playing them on a PC or Console and I doubt there’s much that can physically change that short of a mental link to our devices in comparison to physical controls. Plants vs. Zombies may work really well on iOS, but Call of Duty surely doesn’t. Until Apple’s devices can do all genre’s justice there will always be a market for Sony and Microsoft’s higher end offerings. Controls matter, and while it’s impressive how far iOS graphics have come there’s more to gaming than just that (not to mention the limitations of having devices that need charging and share that capacity amongst many tasks vs. plugged in all the time and just for games)
If Nintendo was smart, they’d build a cheap $99 box that plays every game they’ve ever made and new ones through a iTunes like platform, and release new $99 boxes every few years to keep pushing the envelope on their new games, but they are a company that simply repeatedly demonstrates not understand how to build platforms. Sony is very much building up a very cohesive ecosystem.
Apple certainly has a lot of opportunity to disrupt the market here, but not without the ability to play all genres well – and particularly a package that comes with an official first party controller that is widely available and of high quality. I have no doubt that an Apple TV SDK will bring tons of games like have come to dominate the iOS market – and I wish games like Ocean Horn and
République show the platform can do serious games.
As for AirPlay, it still just gets you touch controls and in the case of an iPad a rather heavy thing to hold on to (see Nintendo’s comparatively awful Wii U controller). While touch has done pretty well with the DS Zeldas or ports like X-Com, and serviceable distraction-quality versions of things even like Street Fighter or GTA, it has its work cut out for it delivering Metal Gear, BioShock, Uncharted, Halo, Shadow of the Colossus, Madden, Call of Duty, Dark Souls, Skyrim, competitive fighting games, Arkham City, The Last of Us, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, Starcraft, Dota, Diablo, The Witcher, Portal, Rayman, Super Mario, Mario Kart – or at the least it’s a long time until touch controls become competent enough for these types of games that aren’t going to suddenly go away because Clash of Clans exists and so effectively sucks money out of people who ultimately don’t really play a ton of games or spend money on many games.
while that may be true for consoles, that certainly isnt true in the markets apple plays in — their first party solutions (mouse, keyboard, headphones, dock, etc) are often consider inferior to the more specialized third-party alternatives.
Yeah… but everyone still has a keyboard, headphones etc to start. Nobody is building software just for a Logitech keyboard like they would have to for a third party game controller if one was not available standard.
Third party accessories have been historically so bad most gamers consider them toxic. It’s only recently that some companies have gone into high end (and cost) controllers that have moderate success but that’s a much harder pill to swallow for a phone where you generally don’t want the extra bulk anyway.
I’m waiting for someone to make an iOS controller case like Sony’s early Android phone which is in my view the best game phone design I’ve seen yet http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/11/exclusive-sony-ericsson-to-introduce-android-3-0-gaming-platfor/ but so fare the controllers that have come out are both low quality, high cost, and bulky as hell.
Chances are though, even with an official Apple controller it’ll be as simple as an NES era design and not have things like analog sticks which can make certain games still difficult, but it’d go a long way toward supporting many of the indie titles thriving with simple but physical controls on platforms like PSN, XBL, and even Ouya.
Without something by Apple and built in, I don’t see developers putting in the extra cost to support controllers or games that require them, when the entire app store depends on low price and massive volume. It’s a fairly toxic environment for high quality games as is.
Why are you saying this? It says right in the title “PlayStation TV” not “Sony TV”.
I mean consider how awkward the “PlayStation TV” brand is. It’s a “play station” that you can’t play on. It’s for TV. They obviously know very well that their strong brand is PlayStation and not Sony if they bet to such degree to name this one.
Too band there’s nothing I want to play on the Playstation.
Nope. I still use my Apple TV. The simple and tactile remote, low power, Airplay are just some of the reasons. I don’t see anyone using PS4s and XboxOnes to replace their Apple TVs.
Indeed – they would’ve already bough the console already. It’s more of a play to further link up their product lines. I can see similar paralels to what apple did with Apple TV and pushing iTunes in to what Sony is doing albeit at a much smaller scale.
Yes the games on iOS are cheaper but thats not the point. The gaming market will always be smaller than the iOS/Smartphone market just on the virtue that a smartphone is a ubiquitous device that everyone will most likely have. A gaming console? Not so much. So i think comparing market share or numbers is a fools errand as one will always (probably) eclipse the other.
Besides… i had a look at the PS TV a couple of weeks ago (didnt know where my friend got it from). But from the sounds of it its more of a set top box
gah – accidetnally sent it in early.
-But from the sounds of it its more of a set top box for your Sony branded console more than anything. And the Hulu and other streaming services are just a tacked on functionality for NA customers.
Coming from outside of NA – i view Apple TV more as a way to funnel stuff from inside my local apple ecosystem out into the living room – and not a set top box.
Honestly – the set top box features always seemed like a very US centric thing to me.
I think its fine the way it is. Leave the controller wrangling games to the consoles. iOS based games can stay as is – they already have the gyroscope, the touch screen, mic, camera, gps, etc etc.
I think most of the game developers and gamers these days are still used to the controller or mouse and keyboard – thats why we see a lot of games with virtual directional gamepads. An instant fail in my book.
TBH as gamers we need to give them more time to adopt and adapt the new control mechanism… some are picking it up faster than the others and thats just it.
Thats the PS Vita. You can get some older PS-games via the PSN store(s).
Unfortunately its around 200$ in price. Its a Sony afterall (in more ways that one if you know what i mean)
They’re not going to beat it ever. The Apple TV has a massive leg up compared to the PS TV -and besides its not their ‘job’ to beat the Apple TV.
Its a bit silly when people assume everything the tech industry is churning out is out to kill Apple.
Nor should they. They have a different set of jobs that they are set to do.
I’m not disagreeing with the fact that its very likely that Apple and Google based devices will storm the casual games market, my only dispute is on the fact that Apple enthusiasts seem to think there’s no value to something like the Playstation TV. The outcome is certainly not settled because they have the advantage of better experiences and years of games to market for very low prices.
If anything, I expect Apple and Google to pick up the crowd that went for the Wii, although where this leaves Nintendo remains to be seen. I almost want Apple to buy Nintendo and drive the platform while Nintendo makes games and defines input mechanisms. Like phones impacting portable consoles, there will certainly be some sort of clash. Nintendo bundling an advanced controller with a well regarded game would probably be one of the few ways you could get large amounts of adoption if it wasn’t bundled to start.
That said, it’s not a matter of “used to controllers” so much as some games genuinely need 14 buttons and analog sticks for precision.
When the Apple TV (iTV, remember?) first came out, it wasn’t a streaming device. It was an AirPlay receiver and a sync target for iTunes. You had to have a Mac running somewhere on your network with iTunes to sync and/or stream media to it.
It was not the set top box of today. It’s position was “Mac Accessory.” While the PS TV has a lot of stand alone qualities, it’s because those features are convenient even as a PS4 accessory. The PS TV is not a challenge to Apple TV. It is a PS4 accessory.
I think power consumption, at least in the United States, is a niche audience for that sort of marketing. “Tactile remote?” That’s a controller. Mind you, the Apple remote is nice, until the buttons go out on it after a year. AirPlay? I already mentioned I still use my Apple TV for AirPlay,
in fact that and the fact that I regularly buy media from iTunes are the primary drivers for why I own one and that’s true for many people. The fact it just happens to stream stuff is an aside. The Apple TV is an AirPlay and iTunes centric device. Look at that immovable top two rows in the main menu and tell me it’s otherwise.
Furthermore, you are conflating Sony’s and Microsoft’s messaging around their consoles. Sony has never billed the PS4 as the new set top box for the living room. Microsoft is the one who went all out trying to market the XBox One as Grandma’s new TiVo. Sony has always marketed the PS4 as a gaming console that also happens to be a BluRay player and streams Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more. No one who isn’t interested in console games will buy a PS4 for those reasons. Sony’s success with the PS4 compared to the XBox One is a result of this difference.
The PS TV is built around the Playstation Store just as the Apple TV is built around the iTunes store. They are different ecosystems intended for different audiences. You underestimate the amount of buy-in people have in the PS Store. You also underestimate the number of Playstation Plus memberships there are in the world.
If you’re already a Playstation Plus member with a PS4, you’ve pretty much already bought this. And that is who the PS TV is for.
But…it has PSNow? You can play games on it. How much bandwidth you need and what sort of latency is tenable is a different question, but it plays games.
The same way Chromecast and Amazon Fire has, it won’t.