
Apple TV is a rethinking of users’ relationship with hardware and games - aaronbrethorst
http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/10/26/9604068/apple-tv-app-size-limit-technology-slicing-tags-200-mb
======
felixgallo
As a game dev, the not-great thing about this is that although there are
instances where assets are used rarely, like tutorial levels, there's also a
lot of good, meaningful cases where > 200 MB of assets are used constantly. If
you have less than 200 MB of local cache to play with, then you will be
constantly discarding and redownloading content.

This puts a hard limit on the top end of visual fidelity and good game
experience, because the dreaded "level loading" screens that are already
approaching difficult and punitive with assets uncompressing in streams
directly off of local storage would now be impossible with those assets
streaming over radically more limited network connections.

That said, it looks like Apple is aiming for the very casual, phone-like
market for their device, especially considering the hard requirement that the
remote must be usable to game with; so that's a cap too.

It'll be interesting to see if their apparent belief -- that there is an
untapped market of people who want to play games on their TVs that is
nonintersectional with the set of people who already play games on their TVs
-- is true.

~~~
pilif
_> If you have less than 200 MB of local cache to play with, then you will be
constantly discarding and redownloading content._

as far as I understood the SDK docs, iOS doesn't start purging downloaded
assets until it's put in the position to having to download more than there is
space for.

So unless people have very full devices and are constantly switching apps, you
won't have to redownload assets.

~~~
felixgallo
Yeah. The thing about gaming is that you have to consider the worst case
scenario. If only 200MB is guaranteed per-app, then that is what is going to
happen in at least some cases. If the experience of those cases is utterly
abysmal because of cache thrashing, then you're going to get a lot of 1-star
reviews.

------
pilif
The good thing about these limits is that they are all arbitrary and enforced
on the server-side in the app store and related infrastructure. If it turns
out that the limits are too stringent, then lifting them is simple.

However, if it turns out that this works out in Apple's favor, then this
provides a huge benefit for users as their devices will last much longer than
they do now.

I can see how the initial reaction of game developers is to think "this can't
work. I can't do this", but I also have a feeling that with time solutions
will present themselves and apple might also weaken the limits a bit where
needed.

The article is quoting Binding of Isaac: Rebirth as something that can't
possibly happen on AppleTV due to this and I honestly doubt that. At no point
in time are all assets visible on screen (heck - novice players will require a
_long_ time before they see anything but the first two levels - the game is
_hard_ )

I'm convinced that the assets could be split into multiple chunks and
delivered as needed.

Then over time, as so far iOS does never expunge downloaded assets until the
system is under memory pressure, the game would remain installed in full as
long as people actually use it (BoI:R is way smaller than the 20GB total limit
right now).

Is all of this different from what we're used to? Sure. Does it make some
classes of games completely impossible? I don't think so. It'll just take some
getting used to, but the limitations actually enforce better architecture
design, so they might even be a very good thing overall.

~~~
ascagnel_
It also makes me think of game levels designed for the 6th generation of
consoles (PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox). Since the consoles had limited
memory, they'd have a permanent resident set of memory, and then individual
levels would be lumped together into a package file and streamed from the disc
on-demand. Lumping them all together meant that they were in the relative
location on the disc, so reducing the drive head seek times. As long as the
game wasn't pushing up against the size limit of the disc, assets would be
repeated to avoid additional seeks (no point in seeking to the sound effect
file, seeking to the music file, seeking to the model file, etc. when loading
a level).

The difference here is that those lumped-together levels live in the cloud and
can be cached to system storage ahead of time (although faster players or
those with slow network connections may need to wait for chunks to cache).

------
ddw
"Another developer who preferred to remain anonymous, out of concern for
damaging their relationship with Apple, looks at it differently."

Hilarious to me that if you even softly criticize Apple you have to do it
anonymously in fear of retribution. Must be an awesome company to work with.

~~~
gilgoomesh
It's not so weird.

When you run a business, you avoid criticising any company you rely on. You
don't start a war with credit card companies, your hosting provider, your
lawyers, your accountants, your insurance company, your building management or
others unless you're prepared for them to give you bad service or drop you
entirely.

Apple have the power to make and break small businesses dependent on the App
Store which sucks but that power isn't unique (most of the services I listed
above could do the same thing). If you can't be diplomatic to essential
business partners, you're going to get abandoned.

~~~
ddw
I agree, but notice the person's comment was diplomatic. It wasn't trashing
Apple, just stating a different viewpoint. And he/she thought it was necessary
to remain anonymous for that.

------
mikeash
It's strange to see Apple pushing so hard to reduce storage requirements,
while at the same time charging $50 for an extra 32GB of flash on the AppleTV
(and charging $100 for an extra 48GB on the iPhone).

The emphasis on storage seems to indicate that they see storage limitations as
a user experience problem. But if they'd stop gouging on storage upgrades,
that would improve the user experience immensely, especially if they bumped up
the storage on the bottom-end iPhone. In the other direction, the fact that
they do gouge seems to indicate that they see storage limitations as a profit
opportunity, so it's weird that they're trying to make it less important.

Maybe this is just the result of internal conflicts. Hardware doesn't want to
upgrade storage, so software tries to mitigate that.

~~~
s73v3r
Reducing storage requirements means that one can fit more apps on the device,
and that apps download and can be used faster.

~~~
mikeash
Not charging outrageous prices for upgrades, and not shipping devices with
ridiculously small storage, would also mean that one can fit more apps on the
device. So what I'm wondering is why they're doing one but not the other.

~~~
s73v3r
I really do not care about the upgrade costs.

However, doing the reduction in assets means that people using their devices
in places where speeds are not great also get a benefit.

~~~
mikeash
I don't know how well that works. Your apps will be ready faster, but if
they're streaming content on the fly then you'll need a relatively fast
connection to avoid lots of delays while using it. With a more traditional
system where you download everything up front, it will take longer but once
you have it your speeds don't matter.

~~~
ssmoot
I have a PS4. Don't play very often. But one thing you notice real quick is
sloppy packaging. The Binding of Isaac needs more than 200MB? Isn't it a
handful of sprites and procedural levels? I've only played for... I dunno, 30
minutes, but it seems like it could have easily been a PS2 game.

And then you have games with 300MB save files. Which is a huge problem since
you only get 1GB of cloud storage for saves. So you end up deleting most.

I care about efficiency. I like that my iPhone charges in 45 minutes unlike
the multi hour charges of the ~3,000+mAh devices I've owned. I like small
downloads. The Apple TV isn't going to have the power of a dedicated console.
There's no reason to download 40GB of texture data.

~~~
mikeash
I agree with what you're saying overall. But this new policy from Apple
doesn't seem to be encouraging efficiency. In some ways it encourages
wastefulness, because once you do the work of making your assets load on
demand, and as long as your stuff fits into 20GB, you don't really have to
care how large they are. They'll always fit on the user's device, you don't
have to worry about crowding out other apps or causing the user to receive
annoying alerts about storage being full, etc., it's all just managed for you.
It will be painful for people on slow connections, and expensive for people on
metered connections, but getting developers to care about that is probably
challenging.

------
api
It seems paradoxical to me that we're in the midst of a crazy Moore's Law
style escalation in both storage speed (the SSD revolution) and storage
density, and at the same time OS and device makers are rushing to make
everything cloud-dependent and trim storage.

'Cloud' seems like it's becoming an end in itself. Put it in the cloud and
give it more cloud because cloud.

------
mcphage
The app thinning itself is nice, but the 200MB max initial load is probably
the most significant consequence to the end user. If you buy a 10GB game, and
have to wait for all 10GB to download before you can use it, you'll be pissed.
But if you can use it just as soon as it gets the first 200MB, you'll be able
to play a lot sooner and have a much better experience.

Just like streaming video overtook non-streaming video—and streaming audio
overtook non-streaming audio, I imagine this is going to be pretty universal
very soon.

~~~
Reedx
You can often start a 40GB game pretty quickly while it's still downloading on
Xbox One and PS4. Although it's usually not used very well - often it just
means you can go to the game's main menu and you have to wait there anyway,
heh.

But I'm sure we'll see this improve over time.

~~~
pilif
This is what has really impressed me back in my WoW days when they added
streaming support with - I think it was WotLK. Even after downloading only 1-2
gigs, you could start actually playing the game.

Yes, it would look crappy and some non-essential stuff would be drawn as
something similar to wireframes, but you could actually play the game.

This was really impressive to me and also confirmation that what Apple is
asking from the developers now must absolutely be possible.

~~~
Reedx
Oh yeah, that actually reminds me of an even earlier example. The first Guild
Wars you could play very quickly while they streamed in other areas of the
game.

I remember being really impressed by that and it felt like the future. But
kind of forgot about it since I didn't see it much until the PS4 and Xbox One,
though they tend not to do it even remotely as well.

~~~
ascagnel_
The entire Guild Wars engine was massively impressive on a technical level.
The levels were large for their time, less powerful systems could run the game
well, well-populated cities didn't drag the system down very much, and the
instanced environments performed spectacularly well.

------
dominotw
I just want to watch good shows, not get into a "relationship" with my TV.

------
derefr
A thought about loading screens: game studios do them because people are
willing to put up with them. But there are definitely ways to do "streaming"
asset loading/unloading in games, that studios almost universally _ignore_
because they trade off loading time for perceived quality (i.e., they make for
sometimes-awful screenshots that could end up in someone's review.)

For example, imagine an open-world MMO game. It's fairly simple to keep a
"base cache" of low-poly models with low-res textures of _all_ the world
areas, and then pull down the asset pack for the "active" area as necessary.
Now, instead of a loading screen, each level looks like prev-gen crap for 30
seconds when you first arrive—but you're free to continue interacting with the
area, as the better-looking assets asynchronously download and replace the
base ones.

This is what people expect for e.g. streaming video—that when your connection
chokes, you get a degraded, blocky view that continues in real-time, and then
slides back into HD as the connection improves.

------
saturdaysaint
This is strange on the surface, considering Apple's continued insistence on
making new 16 Gb iPhones.

My best explanation is that this effort is a prelude to enforcing app thinning
on their phones, with the ultimate aim of boosting the market for AAA games.
Even a 128 Gb iPad/iPhone 6S can only hold so many 5 Gb+ games - which is a
major limitation as the hardware is increasingly capable of "AAA" experiences.
If my own experience is any guide, the more a user has to delete those big
games, the fewer big games they buy (and, indirectly, the less incentive there
is to make them). App thinning might make it possible for a user with a 32 Gb
Apple TV or iPhone to have 100 Infinity Sword / FIFA caliber games technically
"installed" on their device (and maybe a dozen such games a 16 Gb iPhone),
making the platforms more inviting for future big releases.

------
Dirlewanger
Great article, very in-depth. However, pretty sure this is an Apple-only
problem, in that they lock down the entire user experience as much as
possible. Expendable storage could easily remedy this.

Still, the whole architecture behind it sounds pretty cool. Remains to be seen
if other settop boxes follow this. Really interested in what the data cost
will be. Right now, not knowing that cost, I would _never_ want an algorithm
to determine what to store/what not to store with something as trivial as
games/media. Then again I'm not the target user for something like this.
Someone's mom shouldn't have to see the "You only have 0.1GB left, please
delete some stuff" message; the ideal UX would indeed be for the system to
handle it for them.

~~~
mcphage
> Really interested in what the data cost will be.

What do you mean by the data cost?

~~~
zaphoyd
Probably the cost of delivering data particularly in regards to the resulting
data churn that having less local storage might require. Not all internet
connections are unlimited.

~~~
mcphage
> Not all internet connections are unlimited.

True, but it's a device designed around streaming high def video (in fact,
other commenters in this thread are complaining about it _not_ streaming 4K
video). So if your data usage is a major concern, I don't think the device has
much to offer.

------
eosrei
"App Thinning" is a useful solution now that Apple has to support a range of
devices. The Play Store has supported multiple device/screen/resolution
specific Android APKs for years, but build process is not automatic:
[https://developer.android.com/google/play/publishing/multipl...](https://developer.android.com/google/play/publishing/multiple-
apks.html) Google recommends against using multiple APKs unless the file size
is greater than 100MB due to the hassles Apple is apparently automating.

------
pmelendez
>"tvOS is content to take some control away from app makers and Apple TV
users, and it does so with purpose and philosophy"

Of course it does... On the other hand, I'm not so sure to be content with
that loss of control, I'm annoyed already with all the content that I "own" on
iTunes but in reality I can't reproduce anywhere else.

So now I must feel happy that Apple can upgrade and delete content/apps from
my device when they please? What sadden me most is that probably in a couple
of month Google and MS would follow that path too.

~~~
s73v3r
This is completely missing the point. They're not deleting apps (although all
three reserve that ability, it seems Google is the only one that's actually
used it), they're deleting the assets from the app. And they're only doing it
because you haven't used it in a long time, and other apps need the space.

------
mentos
So if the idea here is to incentivize developers to create apps that can be
functional after only a 200Mb download is this approach the most efficient way
to achieve that?

------
panzagl
This seems like an excellent way to give Comcast the power to decide how well
your new product runs.

------
cromwellian
Everything old is new again. The Web never required you to manage local
storage and streamed content, cross platform, on demand. Java Applets and
Flash did so as well.

In another 2 or 3 years, we'll be back to where we were in 1996, only with
native code.

------
Shivetya
I so would hope you could configure it so that you can keep certain apps
loaded, iow locked. I understand what they are after but with this much
storage the limit is a bit low.

~~~
pilif
iOS so far doesn't start to remove content until the System needs to provide
more space than what is available.

When that point is reached, in the past the user would have been required to
go in an delete apps they don't need (or opt to not install the new app
because they think they need all of their existing ones).

Now, the system can start to remove some of the mostly unused data in other
apps to make room.

I really believe this to be an improvement compared to the past.

------
skrowl
Rethinking TV back to 1080p maximum while everyone Android TV and Smart TVs
built in apps are all 4K?

------
tinfoilman
I got me an AppleTV Gen2 and I love it. Even actively looking for more Gen2s
but they are rather expensive now.

The Gen2 could be rooted, and XMBC installed with Addons. It offers a great
interface, stylish hardware and using XMBC I can link the apple TV directly to
my home Nas and stream media from that. Something I never liked about the
appleTV was being locked in to only being allowed media in the 'apple approved
way' hence the rooting.

I have a few android boxes but they are just not as tidy

Does not really relate to the post just a random overshare

