When the Apple TV App Store opened up in 2015 it had a lot of promise. Knowing how hard it is to develop for big game consoles, I expected this to mean a flood of games for Apple's new "game console" masquerading as a streaming device.
Nearly eight years later and... that's not the case. At all.
Games aren't the biggest category, or even second or third.
If not games, what are the biggest categories on the Apple TV App Store?
Education!
The largest category of apps for the Apple TV is education. Surprised? me too!
Of the roughly 15K apps available for downloads through the Apple TV App Store right now, about 25% are in the education category. That wasn't what I expected.
Entertainment and Lifestyle, the two other categories I expected to dominate, do in fact dominate. There are more than 5,000 apps between the two categories, which makes sense considering that's where most of the apps you'd expect to live in a TV to exist.
Games ranked 4th, and as a casual gamer, the TV never really attracted me as a gaming device, so I'm not surprised. The Apple TV remote is a terrible controller, and even with a dedicated controller, most games just don't feel right to me.
I think it's a huge missed opportunity though. The Apple TV is a powerful device that can easily serve good games, but beyond hardware, it's Apple's lack of promotion that makes it hard to be successful with an Apple TV game. Much like developing for the Mac...
Music, News, and Sports all have more than 500 apps each while Health & Fitness, Utilities, and Photo & Video dip below.
What is interesting is the trend of new releases. While the numbers are small -- the Apple TV App Store saw the same number of new releases in 2022 as the iOS App Store sees in about 48 hours -- they are growing, and 2022 saw the biggest increase in recent years.
The Apple TV will be a gold mine for developers once Apple figures out how to make it easier to get new apps. I say will and not could because it's just a matter of time until that happens.
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