tvOS 27 Could Be the Apple TV Gaming Reboot I Have Been Waiting For

WWDC kicks off tomorrow, and while everyone is understandably fixated on Siri and the next round of Apple Intelligence features, I keep coming back to a quieter corner of the lineup: tvOS.

With tvOS 27 on the way and a new Apple TV widely expected to land sometime this year, I think Apple has a real shot at doing something it has been fumbling for a decade. It could finally make the Apple TV a place people actually want to game.

I know how that sounds. Apple TV gaming has been a punchline for years. But hear me out, because the pieces are lining up in a way they never have before.

A decade of almost's

It is easy to forget Apple ever cared about gaming on the Apple TV, but the company went all in back in 2015.

The Apple TV HD shipped with a Siri Remote that had a built in gyroscope and an accelerometer, and the pitch was that you could use it like a tiny motion controller. Titles like Crossy Road and Jetpack Joyride made the jump from iOS, and for a brief moment it felt like Apple wanted the living room to be a casual gaming hub.

Then reality set in. A year later, after a lot of back and forth with developers, Apple finally let MFi game controllers act as the primary input on tvOS, which is how Minecraft eventually arrived. It did not exactly set the world on fire, and the hardware was a big reason why. That Apple TV was running an A8 chip, which was not built for anything ambitious.

Things looked promising again in 2019. Apple Arcade launched, and tvOS 13 added native pairing for Xbox and PlayStation controllers, which was genuinely great.

But two ceilings were still in place. Apps were capped at a 4GB bundle size, and the box was powered by an A10X. Then in 2021 Apple bumped the chip to an A12 and, in the same breath, redesigned the Siri Remote and dropped the gyroscope and accelerometer entirely. A bunch of those early motion games simply stopped working unless you hung on to your old remote.

Today the Apple TV sits on an A15. Meanwhile the iPhone, iPad, and Mac have all gotten the AAA gaming spotlight, and the Apple TV, the one Apple device that actually lives under your television, has been left watching from the sidelines.

Why this year feels different

The hardware excuse is about to disappear.

Reports point to the next Apple TV getting the A17 Pro, the chip that debuted in the iPhone 15 Pro. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has reported that the new box will arrive with updated chips and is positioned to show off Apple's revamped Siri, and a jump from the A15 to the A17 Pro is not a minor spec bump.

The A17 Pro brings hardware accelerated ray tracing and MetalFX, which is exactly the kind of graphics horsepower Apple has spent the last few years showing off on iPhone.

And it has been showing it off relentlessly. Think about how many recent Apple events leaned on a big AAA moment, whether that was Assassin's Creed Mirage or Resident Evil Village running on an iPhone.

Apple has also been quietly building out its Game Porting Toolkit to make it easier for studios to bring their existing titles to Apple platforms. The intent is obviously there. What excites me is that, for the first time, the Apple TV would have the silicon to actually be part of that story instead of an afterthought.

The software changes I actually want to see

Powerful hardware is only half of it, though. If Apple wants tvOS 27 to matter for gaming, there are a few specific things I would love to see it tackle.

First, bring the Games app to the Apple TV. Apple rolled out its new Games app across iPhone, iPad, and Mac as a single hub for launching titles and tracking achievements and leaderboards, but the Apple TV got left out.

A living room device is the most obvious place in the world for a dedicated games launcher, so this one feels like low hanging fruit.

Second, and this is the big one, Apple has to fix the install limits. Apple TV apps are still held to that 4GB cap, plus a frankly absurd 500KB of persistent on device storage. Apps can write more than that, but the system is free to wipe it whenever it feels like it. On a box that starts at 64GB and can be configured up to 128GB, those limits make no sense. No serious game can live inside those constraints, and until they change, no amount of chip power will matter.

Third, extend the Game Porting Toolkit to tvOS. If Apple wants developers to bring real games over, it should make that path as painless on the Apple TV as it is everywhere else.

So, am I getting my hopes up?

A little, yes. I have been burned by Apple TV gaming before, so I am not pretending tvOS 27 is going to turn the thing into a PlayStation overnight.

That said, the timing genuinely feels right. We are in a moment where memory shortages are pushing up the cost of building a gaming rig or even buying a console, and a capable Apple TV that already sits in your living room starts to look like a pretty appealing option for a casual gamer who just wants to relax with a controller.

I am cautiously optimistic. The hardware is finally catching up, the software hooks are mostly built, and Apple has spent years signaling that it wants to be taken seriously in gaming. tvOS 27 is the moment to prove it means the Apple TV too.

Do you still try to game on your Apple TV, or did you give up on it years ago like most people I know? I would love to hear whether anyone is still holding out hope alongside me.