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Published on May 21st, 2012 00:42
Coincidence or not, it was a warning to console makers of things to come. While the old games industry gathered in LA for its annual E3 pissing contest, a loud message was sounding 350 miles to the north.Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which just happened to overlap with the biggest week in the games industry's calendar, also just happened to feature a games-heavy keynote.Nine months earlier, Steve Jobs had unleashed both barrels against handheld rivals, declaring iPod Touch, with a sneaky fudge, "the number one portable games player in the world", boasting that it "outsells Nintendo and Sony handhelds combined".Last June, Apple had a different target in its sights. "iOS5 is the most popular games platform on the planet," the company bragged, jubilantly noting that Game Center sign-ups had shot past 50 million in nine months - an impressive figure when put against the 31 million that Microsoft had managed to coax onto Xbox Live in eight years.This was executive willy-waving of the type Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo had been doing in each others' faces for years through the pantomime medium of E3 conference season. But the new kid had its own stage.And it foreshadowed, if the ceaseless rumours are to be believed, the next big scrap between Apple and the console makers: the battle for the living room.Suggestions of a smart TV from Apple have been rife since Steve Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, reported the late leader's revelation: "I finally cracked it".This "integrated television set" would be "completely easy to use", Jobs said, "seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud", and have "the simplest user interface you could imagine".There's not been a single peep out of the company officially since, obviously, on whether an Apple-made TV exists or not, but that hasn't stopped the tech press reporting on it almost daily. The latest twist came with the gossip that Apple was set to acquire Loewe, a posh TV maker in Germany. Loewe moved to rubbish the report, but the rumours rolled on regardless.'I finally cracked it,' the late Steve Jobs reportedly said of an Apple produced Smart TV. We may be able to see that solution for ourselves soon.
For the purposes of this article I'm going to ignore the boring debate over whether Apple definitely is or definitely isn't making a TV - mostly because no-one outside of those directly involved (or not) seems to have a clue - and assume there is no smoke without fire. Because I want to consider what an "iTV" would mean for gaming and how it might threaten the businesses of the companies that make those beloved boxes beneath our current sets.When it comes to user-friendliness, existing smart TVs are a bewildering mess in dire need of an iRevolution. I have no complaints about the picture quality of my Sonia Bravia 3DTV. Similarly, while the 'smart' interface on it for connected services is about as well-designed as a restaurant website, I can - and do - live without it quite happily, with five separate boxes plugged into it that do that stuff much better anyway.Nevertheless, the impenetrably over-complicated remote is like a '60s vision of the future made by Blue Peter. And I don't need to see it for real to know how incredible it would be to control a TV with an iPhone and an iPad. And games, too? You betcha. We can of course already glimpse how this would work today by streaming an iPad via Airplay onto a flatscreen using Apple TV.The pressing concern for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, though, is not that an iTV would be able to offer - or even seek to offer - comparable experiences to those possible on dedicated gaming systems. It's that, in the fight for eyeballs and digits, Apple will wade in and take over another established market, fatally limiting the growth potential of the next generation of games boxes at the very moment they are casting out their entertainment nets ever-wider."An iPad plus iTV combination is not exactly a million miles away from what Nintendo is pitching with its tablet-based WiiU."
It spells potential trouble for Nintendo because an iPad plus iTV combination is not exactly a million miles away from what the Japanese company is pitching with its tablet-based WiiU. And of all the console manufacturers, Nintendo has struggled most in expanding its entertainment offering online and beyond gaming.As the reinvigorated, post-Super Mario and Mario Kart 3DS shows, great games can still go a long way, but it's hard to overstate the importance of the firm's E3 conference after last year's botched WiiU reveal. And the sudden emergence of Apple - already going for the throat in handheld - as a living room rival piles on the pressure.With the mainstream seemingly slowly shifting away from gaming-only devices, Nintendo seems least well-prepared for a skirmish on those terms. But at the same time - and until we know more about WiiU - it seems the least exposed to it of the three console makers.Sony, like Nintendo, has been hit hard by smartphones in the handheld space, with
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