One developer has found out that Apple TV games all must work with the remote, they can’t require an MFi controller at all. This is according to Apple guidelines in the App Programming Guide for tvOS, which states that “Your game must support the Apple TV remote. Your game may not require the use of a controller." This makes sense for Apple to do from a user experience standpoint, where they might not want to have anything on the Apple TV’s App Store that is inaccessible to people, but there are some issues to be had.
See, there are some games that support controllers that likely won’t work well with the new remote. The remote isn’t exactly great as a 2D controller like some Roku models:
But this could lead to problems. There will be games that will have control schemes that are too complicated for the remote, for sure. What if Apple rejects apps that feature terrible controls for the remote, designed only to achieve the bare minimum functionality? Or developers with complicated controls decide to skip making their app compatible with the Apple TV because it won’t be worth it? Ideally, we don’t want to get to a point where games aren’t coming to the Apple TV, or being actively rejected, because they won’t fit the remote. Rex Rocket ($1.99) might be perfect for the Apple TV but how do you fit that game on the remote?
What’s odd is that Apple apparently has made a policy change from just last week, where they did allow developers to require a controller:
@austin_walker Ahh, found. Yes, confirmed. https://t.co/MP22DyKWn9 pic.twitter.com/ahUWMMhWQF
— Rusty Moyher (@rustym) September 9, 2015
We’ll see how things shake out, and it’s quite possible that this winds up being a minor issue in the scheme of things, or that Apple changes their mind again. Developers will likely work around it, but we can certainly hope that their anger over Apple’s bizarre whims could lead to a better set of circumstances for them – and this decision seems likely to create games with poor remote controls and games that skip the Apple TV altogether. How does this make the Apple TV better?
That "big update" has nothing to do with those sneak peeks. That update was released this morning. Might want to do a little more research :)
For clarification, the "big update" will be announced at clashcon.
Today was a separate, balancing update.
The big update is probably Town Hall 11 which might be announced at the event
To provide some more context to Overlord's comment:
Sneak peeks were released on the official Clash of Clans Twitter page yesterday for a balancing update that came out earlier today which included the spell reworks, troop adjustments (lava hound AI), additional walls, and the tiebreaker feature that you mentioned in your article.
Supercell also confirmed that players can expect another, bigger, update to come out of ClashCon in October. The mystery update coming out of Helsinki will not contain any of the adjustments mentioned in the article as they have already been implemented at the time of writing.
Hope this helps, cheers!
good to see this clarified, I was a little underwhelmed seeing the update on my list already.
Thanks for letting me know guys. The sources I was following tripped me up on this one.
I can see how you interpreted what you did from your article. I know that TA doesn't have many, if any clashers on their staff, this sort of thing is bound to happen now and again. I just wanted to clear things up for any readers who were confused.
Say what you will, I love this f***ing game