A little surprised apple didn't create they're own game controller...I think it would make Apple TV even a bit more compelling overall.
Apple has an amazing casual market and it makes more sense to capitalize on that.
Having said that do you care to elaborate on your first claim. Not sure I understand where you are getting that from.
1. The gaming community is one of the most critical, volatile, toxic cultures I've ever seen. See: Gamergate. This isn't a comment on individuals, just the collective. This is where my impression of whiny, entitled children comes from.
2. Apple seems quite comfortable in the casual gaming community.
3. Coming out with their own hardware would be a commitment to gaming that would open themselves up to actually WANTING the criticism of the gaming community. I don't see Apple relishing this at the moment, especially after the Apple Watch flop and the introduction of a stylus 8 years late.
I think Apple wants to focus their own design energy on the broadest customer base, which means casual gamers. Based on that, it makes sense that they would basically deliver their rendition of the Wii-mote. It's interesting to compare it to the FireTV remote as well.
Honestly, there's a lot of "hard core game" controllers out there and they all fit in the mold of the XBox/Playstation dual-stick model. It's a smaller market, and people tend to be brand loyal and also generally not fans of Apple. So I think it makes a lot of sense for them to stay out of that racket and leave it to third parties.
What have they done for game developers? Almost nothing it seems. If anything, they've made it harder to reach Apple customers by fragmenting the experience across 3 form factors, with the same 70/30 revenue model. There doesn't seem to be any true rational why you would need an AppleTV, that another cheaper product doesn't do better, or something many people already have doesn't already do.
Microsoft and Sony both sell tablets, phones, desktops and laptops as well as Apple. Of the three who's OS, development tools, deployment and hardware lineup seems most coherent to you?
> ...There doesn't seem to be any true rational why you would need an AppleTV, that another cheaper product doesn't do better, or something many people already have doesn't already do.
I don't think there's ever been a single Apple product ever released that people didn't say the exact same thing about.
It is a real pain to get into the console market.
This was designed to work in conjunction with hardware makers who made game controller shells that housed iPhone / iPod Touch, but with some extra physical buttons.
I always viewed this as laying the groundwork for an Apple TV App Store, but it seemed to instantly lose traction and haven't heard anything about since the couple of months following WWDC 2013.
I assume that API will gain some more steam now.