Rumour: Apple 'Poaching' Xbox Engineers To Potentially Make A Video Game Console

Interesting you didn't quote the bit where they talked about news sites writing stories about this on Monday!

Another made up rumour about something this guy has "heard"

Articles should just be factual, not helping run the rumour mill

On the "rumour" it self though I would welcome a new competitor to the market, especially one the size of apple who could create a very powerful machine and get some exclusives with the money they have and even create their own studio's.
But we all know what will really happen, they will go the route of stadia and add little support to it and abandon it after a few years

I wont buy anything crapple so makes no odds to me. Morons will rush out and buy it though, they could paint a brick white and tell the sheep its a new apple console and they would rush out to buy it.

@FraserG no offense taken, I just thought it was funny as they debated the newsworthiness of it getting re-reported (I finished listen to it barely 2 hours ago so it was fresh in the memory). Oddly enough I think Jez is dead wrong on this, the most Apple will do is bolster Apple TV for their Arcade service.

Here we go. It seems plausible to me. Gaming has exploded as a business and more and more companies will want a piece of the cake. That's why Capcom, Square Enix and the likes should be bought by Microsoft or Sony before they get poached by Apple, Google, Facebook or Netflix.

It’s entirely possible but I’m not sure I see Apple going the hardware route and bringing out a console. Xbox hardware is second to none at the moment, the S/X are unbelievably well designed, so I wouldn’t be surprised if staff are being approached by all sorts of outsiders.

Some people are so short sighted and don’t see the bigger picture right now. Kinda sad.

@gollumb82 they are all American companies and those Japanese devs won't sell to them. If anyone buys them it will be Sony or Nintendo

@UltimateOtaku91
That's why I mentioned Sony. I sort of want Sony to buy them because somehow Capcom and SE make the most sense for the PS ecosystem. I just know that both Sony and Microsoft have the good of gaming on their agenda (money is a factor of course), whereas I don't trust any of the corpos I mentioned earlier.

@gollumb82
Capcom sees the PC as the main platform for their future videogames, not the PlayStation. From this it can be concluded that Sony will not buy Capcom at all

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/capcom-says-it-will-make-pc-its-main-platform-going-forwards/amp/

With all the money and employees they have I'd be surprised if they didn't have a handful of experienced people working full time on that as well as a couple people working on cars, or coffee machines. With billions in the bank they can afford to keep an eye on possibilities.

Apple fans are almost the opposite of traditional gamers (Pippin belongs to a different Apple era and it didn't work anyway) and could be defined as casual snobs. Microsoft's engineers are the best in the industry as proven by Xbox One X, Series S and Series X so I wouldn't be surprised if someone else approached them. I honestly don't give this rumour much credit but I think that Apple might release an Apple controller for their Apple devices and boost their Apple Arcade brand but not looking at Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony as inspiration but Google, Amazon and Netflix.

@BlueDragon Yep Capcom love being multiplatform. The only reason why Nintendo had different games from Capcom is because of the inferior hardware since Wii: Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles (that also made great use of the Wii Remote), Zack & Wiki (same), etc. Recently, they made a Monster Hunter for the big consoles and Windows and then a more limited Monster Hunter for Switch, that went multiplatform (Windows) this month but they would have ported World to Switch if they could (and if it wouldn't run at 15fps). I think Capcom want to be independent and they said they want to publish their games for Windows OS. Square Enix like getting money for timed exclusivity, selling themselves temporarily and Sega like Microsoft but I don't know if enough to being acquired.

@Banjo-

For us, it is better for Capcom to remain independent because it would not like Sony to buy it because then it will not release for Nintendo consoles, Xbox and PC. Capcom has a great collaboration with Nintendo and that’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t like Sony to buy Capcom.

@BlueDragon Yes, I think Capcom is the third-party that has developed the best games for Nintendo but I also think that they are one of the best developers in the world. Whatever studios Sony buy, there will only be a way to play their games (PS5) and who knows if they'd have to make semi-open world movie-games like the other Sony studios.

@BlueDragon
Everybody and their mother are in love with the PC market nowadays. I happen to despise PCs as gaming machines. As long as we get Capcom's games on either Xbox or Playstation, I'll be happy.

@FraserG Yeah I agree with @themightyant, I don't listen to those podcasts and just reading this piece it's 100% obvious that this is a rumour without any kind of proof so I don't feel misled at all.

@gollumb82 I think that the day playing games is PC only I'll go back to my console backlog and even find another hobby. Consoles are hassle-free.

@Banjo-
My thoughts exactly. The day gaming becomes a PC-only kind of entertainment that's the day I'll quit buying new games and just fall back on my collection of console games. Actually, I'm thinking of buying a PS3 and not a PS5 🤣

My humble opinion but Apple is a joke when it comes to non-mobile games so unless they're in it for the long haul & want to compete against people with 20-50 years in the console space, they should probably just stick with making billions from crappy, repetitive mobile games. I remember a flagship game at an Apple conference a few years back was The Wizard of Oz. Not sure how many people found that to be a compelling reason to game on an Apple product

@themightyant I have no idea but I don't see Apple making a traditional console like Microsoft or Sony but I see them making controllers and probably streaming, VR and any kind of thing for their current line of mobile devices.

@Medic_Alert it would be stolen technology from Sony or Microsoft like everything crapple. Stolen tech all the way

I like and buy Apple goods, but I’d never buy any console from them, it would be ridiculously priced for one thing and run entirely on its own proprietary standards instead of industry ones.

@gollumb82 Same here 🤣. So many old games yet to play. I'm playing Sonic Unleashed on Series X (60fps) and it's better than I expected but Sonic Forces is even worse than I expected. I mean, Sonic Forces is as bad as New Super Mario Bros. 2 and, interestingly, they are both developed by inexperienced staffers.

@gollumb82 Except that they never said that they will cut off console support?

@Banjo-
I'm also playing Sonic Unleashed and only just bought Max Payne 1-3 in the recent backwards compatibility sale 🙂 Gotta love the BC on Xbox. Wish Sony would follow in their footsteps (no, PS Now is not the same).
@BomberBlur07
It's not so much Capcom making such decisions but rather MS opting not to make another console and just going all in on Game Pass and cloud gaming (which is getting better, admittedly, but still not as good as playing natively). Sony might just do the same and there might not be a PS6. I know it's pure speculation, but you hear rumblings about cloud gaming being the future.

Apple sell 200 million iPhones a year. Let that sink in for a moment. Everyone is saying how well PS5 is doing a year and a bit after launch approaching 20 million. They don’t need to make a games console. They’re doing fine. 😀

@Scenes They really don't need the traditional market, they're probably more interested in getting more Android players.

@gollumb82 Yep Sony is far behind in regard to backwards compatibility, streaming, etc. The backwards compatibility of Xbox is probably my favourite feature of the last and current generation.

@Medic_Alert Dont they have the apple arcade on their iPhones? Essentialy an iPhone gamepass? I belive they also have exclusive games on iPhones so I think it would match the brand to expand to consoles. The way they would go, imho, is overpriced hardware, with overpriced accesories (I mean just look at the price of the wheels for mac pro, or their monitor stand) which apple fanboys would still buy but I dont think it would do much outside of apple fans.

EDIT: Also the only gaming console on the market is the switch, really, the rest are multimedia devices so the console would also be a good way for them to push apple tv on people and who knows what other products and services they have that they could just slap onto the console

@Medic_Alert well they are no longer limited to being just gaming consoles, multimedia device fits it better. I mean, nowdays you don't even need a computer anymore if you don't use it for rendering or something like that. If you are just a basic user that checks/sends emails, reads the news and maybe sometimes writes some documents, you can really just hook up mouse and keyboard to your series S (which is cheaper than a regular computer, really) fire up the edge browser and do all those things there. The last thing I need is for Teamviewer to work in a browser (without much limitation) and I could really just work Home Office on my xbox.

My gut feeling tells me that any Apple product enjoyer is also a pretty commited PS brand enjoyer, so good luck getting them to swap consoles.

@Rural-Bandit better battery life lmfao don't make me laugh. They last about 7 minutes before being flat, take your head out of Crapples arse, there are crap nuggets around your face with the ***** you are speaking. Crapple sheep. Stolen technology every single thing theyve ever made.

@Scenes 200 million total idiots who will buy any faulty pile of rubbish with a new number that Crapple will ever push out.

@Medic_Alert they have stolen every technology they've ever had. Mainly from Samsung or even Sony Ericson. But don't let that get in the way of you sheeping for Crapple

A "console," unlikely. I'm no engineer, but how how is it to make a set top box for your existing app store and a dedicated controller?

@Carck No Apple is not the industry standard for mobile games, globally it’s far behind android in market share. Only in the US does it have the lions share.
And I have an iPhone and Apple TV and hardly play games on either. It’s all freemium shovel ware crap.

I don't believe this at all. Mobile is where the money is and Apple is already doing nicely in that area. Would seem a backward step to go into console.

@MyThoughts31 we get it. You don’t like apple. You aren’t going to convince anyone going on about it. Can we move on?

@Medic_Alert oh they had lawsuits galore. Maybe I suggest you read up on it before running your mouth. Samsung directly sued them for theft of intellectual copyright

@S1ayeR74 even though android outsells iphone the indutry standard for mobile game development is iphone first then android. This is due to most Android users due not pay for games or not as much.

@Arcnail true but iphone sales are starting to wane.the pandemic has shifted alot of people's purchase, (they still sell a ***** ton of them) but it's about expanding like how Microsoft first went in with Xbox to compete with Sony.

On topic i think apple would explore and prototype this, as plenty of investment companies and tech companies are trying to enter the market, will apple actually release a product,That is another thing altogether

@Medic_Alert yes but if you wanna buy a device that let's you play games while listening to music on Spotify and also that let's you watch movies when you feel like it (either Netflix, some browser Web page or even external USB HDD/Flash Disk) you wouldn't go for the switch

It's a great idea, It will cost £2000, will have top end 2015 performance, every game will be £250 and in 3 years the Apple crowd will tell everyone who will listen that Apple invented the Console and Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox are just cheap copies.

rumours arnt news

anyone can make stuff up but as its on the internet so it must be true

It has been a rumor for awhile now that Apple is making its own console. Now that they’ve been “poaching” Xbox engineers, it’s news worthy. If Apple was going to make a console, I think they would have done it by now.

@Carck Both you and @Terin are not accurate in your assumptions as their are a fair few games on Android that are not on iOS.
As to iOS users paying more for in app purchase, yes they do cause they get lured into a sense of security by Apple, and stupidly throw money at pointless in app purchases.

If something of this sort ever comes to fruition, it needs to be shunned and boycotted... friggin iSlaves

If there's any truth to this rumour — and I think that's a pretty big "if" — I would take it to mean Apple is bringing on people to establish a gaming service, similar to xCloud or Game Pass, that would probably be locked to iOS devices and may even just be an extension of their App Store.

@Carck : Interesting, I didn't know about Apple Arcade. So if there's anything to this rumour then a dedicated hardware platform is actually the logical conclusion? I have a hard time believing this is a good time to introduce a new gaming console, but I guess it depends on what Apple's long-term plans are.

I heard the moon is made of cheese. I don't have any documents, or pictures, or sources or anything. It's just a thing I heard.

As for Apple, yeah, I'm sure Pippin 2 will be the talk of the town and really change the future of gaming.

I'm absolutely sure Apple explores owning games companies, publishing, and exclusive ownership over content. That's what Apple does. Even more than Sony. I'm also absolutely sure Apple's not looking at a console, in the context of what Xbox and PlayStation are. Apple doesn't do powerful desktop hardware. And where they do, Macbook Pro, and Mac GX, they charge like 80% over competition. Apple BigMac console would have it's audience from the loyalists, but I doubt many would move from their $500 PlayStation or $500 Series X to a $979 BigMac. If Apple's pursuing gaming it would be something tied to the AppStore, their cloud services, streaming, etc. They'd be gunning to be a more powerful Switch rather than a PS/XB competitor. Nintendo is probably more threatened by an Apple physical device. I think they'd be aiming for the same market.

Could they be building their own studios to try to out-compete Game Pass with a new tier of Apple Arcade? Yes. But Apple's not super into producing content internally, they're more interested in just buying distribution rights to external content. Their hardware is still their priority, but the kind of hardware they make, despite being very expensive, is, functionally, more more in the vein of what Nintendo does than what MS or Sony does.

Meanwhile they're already the biggest games store on Earth with 30% of most of that sweet mobile revenue stream.

@Terrin MS didn't get into Xbox specifically to enter the market, though, they got into it mostly to protect the market they already had, namely, video games developers and Windows gaming, where DirectX was being eroded by OpenGL as Sony's consoles started taking off and eating market. If MS weren't directly threatened in existing business by the rise of PS, they wouldn't have cared or become involved in this space. Apple doesn't really have anything threatened by this space. Even MS owning King still just feeds revenue into them same as always. Some view MS as an invader into Sony's territory, but it's the other way around. Sony invaded MS's territory, accidentally and indirectly, especially on the B2B side of things, and Xbox was MS responding to the threat.

@Richnj IDK, my mind associates Apple and Nintendo more than Apple and Sony. Maybe Apple fans are split between Nintendo and Sony. Or maybe PS users are committed Xperia fans? No...I've yet to see one Xperia fan....

@gollumb82 I don't get this newfound love for PC gaming. It's no less expensive or inconvenient than it ever was, really. I was hardcore PC in the late 90's into the 00's, and finally got sick of it all and went back to console. I'm fairly sure it mostly has to do with the Asia market more than anything in the West. China, Korea, increasingly Japan, is all in on PC, and Steam's #1 used langauge flip flips between English and Simplified Chinese. I'm not sure it's about Americans and Brits suddenly abandoning consoles and moving to PCs in droves so much as the Asia market opened up and everyone wants a piece of a market that, on paper, is bigger than the whole Western market. It's such a time and money sink to deal with, even if it's the "best experience" (if you keep up with your spending.) Of course it seems like a lot of the "PC Master Race" these days is less about max settings like it used to be and more dedicated to "1080p is more than anybody will ever need".... I still love the God of War PC max specs requiring a 16-core AMD CPU or a $500 Intel octocore.... I remember when "PC Master Race" was about best specs, not, half the resolution of consoles. A "max spec" rig for GoW would cost....what....$3500-4000? You're looking at over $1k just for the GPU and CPU and nothing else.

@Banjo- Sooner or later Sony will realize that this industry no longer works by building a totally closed system and amassing exclusivity. That ship sailed when PS4 caved to go x86, though I don't think Sony still realizes that's the agreement they caved to, and why publishers were pushing on them for that. Maybe PS could have had their model if they stayed proprietary rather than building a white Vaio with a PS logo. I just don't know if they'll realize it soon enough to change the narrative in advance, of if they'll wait until they start losing market share leading up to PS6.

@BlueDragon What a coincidence, PC is also Sony's main platform going forward.... (ba-dum-tss.)

I cant see them releasing a traditional console.

Apple with hardware has always been about high end high price. In the laptop and mobile space they have success with that.

I just cant see traditional console buyers swallowing a premium price point for potentially similar hardware, nor could I see Apple launching hardware at low markup to drop the price either.

I could see them utilising experienced staff in the software space to beef up Apple Arcade though.

@NEStalgia you make some great points but what do they consider a threat to them. Netflix sure considers disney+ as a treat but they gave stated forbite is there biggest threat.
Do apple consider game consoles now as there biggest threat as people can spend money on that store front ibstead of theres also for using devices to do things like watch streaming services.
I doubt they enter this space but I bet jez wasn't wrong that apple grabbed a few Xbox engineers to mess around in the space to see what it would looked like.

@NEStalgia
Some great points as usual, NEStalgia. Back in October, when I sold my PS5, I was considering buying a gaming PC for a moment but realised I'd have to spend $2000 to buy a rig that would be a considerable upgrade and one that would let me play all new releases in 4K/60. Then the strangest thing happened... I realised it would be dumb to spend so much on a gaming platform and that I don't need all the bells and whistles when I game. So, I got a Series S and a PS4 instead and spent less than the retail price of either XSX or PS5. The library of games I get with that combo is more than enough to keep me busy until it's actually worth buying a PS5 (in my case that means whenever Naughty Dog's next game comes out). Not going back to PC and I hope PC will never eclipse consoles.

@gollumb82 Technically PC has always eclipsed consoles since the N64 era, but what does that even mean? Most of the PC specs are basically average laptops with built in graphics running indie games... I'd love to know what the real overlap is of console and PC players versus what percentage of PC playing very low demand games, and what percentage of PC is really just about the competitive RTS/FPS/MOBA/MMO scene. Things like MonHon do insanely well on PC, though.

@Terrin That's a good question, and we can't forget Apple formally changed their line of business to include gaming. But, at the same time, traditional console is only a threat if they see it having potential to take market share from the AppStore. That might be happening, especially with Game Pass and other streaming services becoming available on iOS. But entering into a high expense, relatively low sales market like console gaming doesn't necessarily help them. It has no synergy with any other product offering.

I do think they may see a threat to time/money spent on the AppStore due to console growth (namely, Switch, however.) But I think they'd more directly combat that with services more than bespoke dedicated hardware. To compete with console/PC the device would have to exist outside the iOS ecosystem and get into the Mac ecosystem unless it's only competing with Switch (or is a partnership with Nintendo?)

I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers they grabbed weren't hardware engineers but rather datacenter/cloud/streaming engineers. That would be very logical. Although Apple doesn't really compete on datacenter/cloud compute, really. Google/Amazon/Microsoft really hold a triopoly on that (along with Tencent, mostly only in China.)

@NEStalgia Yep, Pippin 2 doesn't exist. I remember Microsoft saying that they didn't want to lose what they had achieved so they also entered the console market so that's right. It's interesting that both Xbox One and PS4 went for the x86 architecture and last gen was a time when almost every third-party game ("indie" games aside) had a Windows version, even Japanese games. Last gen was also when Play Anywhere started and when Sony started releasing their games on Windows (months later). This generation, Xbox is fully console+PC+cloud and they went from 6 studios in 2017 to 38 in 2022. Sony is following Microsoft's steps (without cross-buy) and who knows what PSNowPlusPass and the future of their PC plans are. It's intriguing because PS5 doesn't have moribund adversaries like PS4 had.

@NEStalgia The irony here is that I actually have an Xperia lol.

@Richnj Oh......

How many texts do you get per month?

@Banjo- The 7th gen really influenced things and set the tone for the 9th. Sony made a mistake mostly in not realizing what they were actually doing, or maybe just not being in a position to care. In a way, Kutaragi both built, and killed PlayStation as it used to be.

Xbox was always supposed to be a PC. The OG was just a Pentium 3 (P3....hmmm..) For some odd reason they switched from x86 to PPC for the 360. 360 was the weird one. Going back to x86 for the X1 was a no brainer, the whole point of Xbox was to extend the PC ecosystem into consoles to challenge Sony. So for MS, they STARTED with consoles-as PCs.

For Sony, they were under immense pressure for publishing partners (haha, Activision...haha...ha....) to switch to x86 because publisers all wanted to be able to just easily port everything between PC and all consoles and maintain one ecosystem. Basically, Xbox's intention of anchoring Windows & DX worked. Most of the publishers were PC-focused, MS brought them into consoles, and they wanted one efficient development target. Normally Sony would have refused and forced everyone to keep doing things uniquely for them, but after the disaster that was the PS3 and Cell, they were in no position to argue, and presumably caved easily to publisher demands.

I don't think they fully understood what publishers wanted. I think they presumed it was simply about simplifying development. I don't think they understood publishers intended to bring the PC ecosystem with them including perpetual sales ("BC"), no generations, floating hardware targets, and in the digital world, interacting services. Being a monopoly last generation didn't help them learn what was really the goal, and I think going into PS5 they started realizing it a little late, thus the way they handle BC, the store, versions, everything. IDK if they're really catching on or not, but it's probably not easy for them to figure out that the start of the PS4 sold them into a PC-driven ecosystem they never intended to really be part of.

As has been stated a few times in the comments MS only entered the console market when Sony started pushing the PS2 as a PC for the living room, Microsoft saw that as cutting in to their market so had to compete. I found this very long article which goes in to the birth of the Xbox to be a very interesting read https://www.shacknews.com/article/120300/bet-on-black-how-microsoft-and-xbox-changed-pop-culture

@101Force it’s Called Apple Arcade. It’s 4.99 a month. It’s been out a few years.

@SubjectNine I will have a look, thanks for sharing that!

@NEStalgia True, that's also why porting original Xbox games is straightforward. When starting backwards compatibility that Rare Replay triggered, they created the Xbox 360 "emulator" that translates data to the x86 language but they said it's relatively easy to make Xbox ports like Grabbed by the Ghoulies that is 1080p 60fps instead of 480p 30fps on the launch Xbox One. The Xbox 360 "emulator" is an engineering miracle (and not those Switch ports in 340p 25 fps LOL).

I wonder why they used PowerPC for Xbox 360. You would expect anything from Sony but not from Microsoft. Was there a reason?

@Banjo- I've often wondered that. It was a huge leap away from the whole point of Xbox. I'm sure it had tons to do with cost (they lost a fortune on each of Xbox just to buy market) and x86 ran hot, power hungry etc. And maybe the p3 Rambus debacle. But it derailed the whole windows dx purpose of Xbox, and ultimately caused rrod anyway. I don't think the documentary commented on that either. It was super weird. X360 has more in common with GameCube and Wii than any other Xbox....

If they are poaching hardware engineers for gaming related hardware, I wouldn’t think it’d be a totally new product. They already sell the Apple TV which runs Apple Arcade. I don’t see them releasing a console to try to compete in the Xbox/PS/Switch space, but more likely developing an in house controller for the Apple TV and putting a bit more marketing on its mobile gaming side and trying to push more Arcade subscriptions.

Q) Do you think Apple will create its own video game console?

A) Apple seem to be pretty hesitant to do anything that would get folks to remember the Pippin and a new console from them would likely conjure up that image. Then again, I've also heard of some Apple Arcade thing (I recall hearing about it from a couple of Rayman and Shantae game announcements) so they already have some form of foothold for a game console... or would it be more of a Stadia thing where there is no console.

Apple is a company that could certainly try and enter the video game console market, but it is a very risky and costly venture that makes me uncertain they'd want too.