Yesterday the new Apple TV was announced and indeed there was an emphasis placed on playing games with it. This is thanks to the new remote which reminds us of the Wii U’s nunchuks, and the fact that companies such as SteelSeries have made dedicated gaming controllers designed for the device.
That being said, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo might not have much to fear about Apple stealing their market share. According to the Apple TV developer guidelines (via BGR), it seems that app size limitations could be one of the factors that could hold back console-quality games from being developed for the device.
According to the guidelines, “Along with the lack of local storage, the maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200MB. Anything beyond this size needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources.” For casual games, 200MB is doable. However if you are hoping for epic titles like Metal Gear Solid, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed (the console version), and etc., you might be out of luck.
This isn’t to say that casual games can’t be fun, it’s just that don’t expect the new Apple TV to replace your consoles anytime soon. Perhaps Apple will increase that limit in the future or with later Apple TV models, but for now those are the device’s limitations.