Developing for Apple TV – Coders Episode 25

Matt Braun isn’t unique in what his game, Sketch Party TV does with the Apple TV, but he is one of a very small group of developers who have successfully utilized the current Apple TV’s support of AirPlay (a method of displaying a second screen on your TV from an iOS device wirelessly) to create a videogame that uses an iOS device and Apple TV in concert. Sketch Party TV Free, his latest iteration, uses an iPhone or iPad to display a word for a player to see, and he or she must then draw something to indicate to the team what that word is. It’s a game you’ve probably played before, but using the Apple TV it really makes sense.
What Braun and others like him have done is create a few games that really do turn your Apple TV into a gaming console. Another game, The Incident, turns your iPhone into a game controller, with the action happening on your TV — all through Apple’s AirPlay and an Apple TV.
The question is, what does a beefier Apple TV bode for future apps? Will there be an Apple TV App Store? Or will Apple’s new offering simply be a cable DVR with Apple TV and Siri features? Tune in as we discuss this and more on this week’s Coders.