With a motion-sensitive remote, voice control and an App Store, is the Apple TV the company’s first games console?

Apple has announced a major upgrade to its Apple TV set-top box, bringing in voice control, a new motion-sensitive remote with a built-in touch pad, and the device’s very first App Store.

The new features combine to make the device a potential games console as well as media player, with Apple’s Eddy Cue taking to the stage to discuss a raft of video games playable on the new hardware, including Disney Infinity and Guitar Hero.

Inside the device, the Apple TV contains a variant of the A8 processor, the same chip found inside the iPhones 6 and iPad Air 2. It’s a jump of three years over the A5 chip found in the previous model, which hadn’t been seen in mobile phones since 2011’s iPhone 4S. The new device will ship in two variants, with 32GB and 64GB of internal storage, costing $149 (£97.57) and $199 respectively, and will go on sale in “late October”, the company says.

A redesigned remote control took front and centre, with a touch-pad at the top allowing it to be used to control apps and games. The remote also features a dedicated Siri button, allowing voice control of the device, and a Wii-style accelerometer and gyroscopes letting developers make use of motion-sensitive input.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses the Apple TV product at the Apple event in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

The new App Store allows developers to create and upload native apps to Apple’s servers, similar to the app stores already available for mobile devices. Jon Carter, of Rock Band developer Harmonix, took to the stage to demonstrate an Apple TV-exclusive game, Beat Sports, which gives a music-game gloss to a Wiisports-style motion-controlled baseball game. Also demonstrated were shopping app Gilt and baseball’s MLB.com.

It’s a marked change from previous models of the Apple TV, which offered a limited portfolio of apps built using javascript and hosted remotely. Those apps, or “channels”, were closer to fancy webpages, and developers needed an explicit invitation from Apple to produce them, greatly limiting the selection available.



Notably, major UK TV services BBC iPlayer, ITVPlayer and Channel 4’s All4 were unavailable on the platform. In the US, the situation was slightly better, thanks to Apple’s high-profile partnership with premium cable channel HBO.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, discusses Apple TV pricing during an Apple media event in San Francisco, California, September 9, 2015. Photograph: BECK DIEFENBACH/REUTERS

Along with the redesigned remote control, the app store allows the new Apple TV to be positioned as a rudimentary games console, taking the company’s commanding position in the mobile games market into the living room. But Apple has often been criticised for taking its success in games for granted.

Apple chief executive Cook said “Our vision for TV is simple, and perhaps a little provocative. We believe the future of television is apps. In fact, this transition has already begun. We’re spending more and more time on our computers and mobile devices enjoying great content through apps such as Netflix and Hulu.”

Fitting with Apple’s theme for the event, the Apple TV also features tight integration with the company’s Siri voice control system. By speaking into a microphone on the remote, users can control the device, and a system-wide search lets them play content from any supported app through the voice.

A user saying “show me funny TV shows”, for instance, will receive a list of comedies sorted by popularity. “Today, when you’re looking for a TV show or movie, you have to open each and every app to see which have them. With Siri, you can search across multiple content apps and see all the results on a single screen,” said Cue.

The voice controls carry on into the playback itself. Asking the device, “what did she say?”, will skip video back 15 seconds, and temporarily turn on closed-captions.

The Apple TV has had a troubled history in the company. Initially announced in 2007 as the “iTV”, the name was changed before launch following a legal threat from the British broadcasters of the same name. A few months after its launch, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs described the new platform as a “hobby”, explaining that “a lot of people have tried and failed to make it a business”.

It took until 2014 for new chief executive Tim Cook to recant that hobby title, revealing that lifetime sales of the line had topped 20 million units.