Despite the inclusion of the super-fast A19 chip and continued support for game controllers, the new 4th-gen Apple TV 4K is still far from a viable gaming device for anything beyond the most casual of audiences, thanks to missing features and mind-boggling design decisions.

Every so often, the Apple TV 4K tries to be a game console, and Apple promotes a ton of games in the App Store to bolster that claim. With the first new Apple TV 4K release in four years, there was hope that the 4th-gen model would take things to a new level.

But at a time when the gaming industry is readying itself for the biggest game release in a decade, and perhaps ever, in the form of Grand Theft Auto 6, the Apple TV 4K just doesn't cut it.

It's nowhere near a viable gaming device. It's time Apple either went all-in or just admitted it never will.

Falling into gaming success

In reality, gamers in the Apple ecosystem are better served by iPhones than Apple TV 4K boxes. Even the Mac, notoriously not a gaming device, has gotten in on the action in recent years thanks to blazing-fast M-series performance.

Apple has promoted gaming on the iPhone. It has done less for the iPad, but it's still there.

In recent years, the Mac got the Game Porting Toolkit, which is now on version 4. Vibecoders are porting stuff to run natively on the Mac, that never ran before.

The theory behind making the Apple TV 4K a gaming device was a strong one, given the rest of the ecosystem. It even gives lip service to gaming on it. But with this latest hardware release, it's clear it just isn't there.

Close, but not close enough

When Apple announced the 4th-gen Apple TV 4K, the addition of an A19 chip suggested this could be the model most suited to gaming yet. It's capable of playing games more smoothly than ever, or running games that would otherwise not be possible to play on an Apple TV 4K. That's good.

The new Apple TV 4K also comes with 128GB as standard, so the 64GB model has been culled entirely. That obviously means more space for installing apps and games. That's good too.

There's continued support for controllers, including the excellent PlayStation DualSense. All of this means that, on the face of it, the new Apple TV 4K could be a gaming powerhouse. After all, we know how capable the A19 is thanks to its iPhone gaming performance.

Alas, these specs don't tell the full story.

The Apple TV 4K still can't be taken seriously as a gaming machine. Certainly not by people who could be considered core gamers.

The Apple TV 4K's limitation to a 4K resolution at 60 frames per second is a problem. Gamers demand more, and modern consoles offer much faster, variable frame rates.

That OLED television probably has a 120Hz refresh rate, and there's no reason other than a poor design choice why the Apple TV can't do that, as the A19 can.

Then there's that 128GB of storage. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't if you want to start installing games. Big-name titles can almost fill that on their own, and tvOS aggressively manages its storage to ensure there's enough of a buffer to stream content.

There's also the lack of Just-In-Time compilation (JIT), to consider. JIT is a feature that could have made the Apple TV the absolutely perfect emulation device, but it's disabled by tvOS.

JIT allows emulators to translate code on the fly, converting it from what's used by old game consoles into something Apple's chips can understand. Without it, emulation performance often takes a huge hit.

Finally, there's perhaps the biggest roadblock to the Apple TV 4K being a real option for gamers. That incredibly high price for what you get.

At $299, the 4th-gen Apple TV 4K is a hard sell, regardless of how you intend to use it. It is absolutely the best streaming box around, but it's also among the most costly.

If you're someone looking for a new way to play games, the Apple TV 4K isn't just missing features and games, but it also costs more than it should for what it does. The upside is hard to find.

A lack of will

If Apple really wanted to turn the Apple TV 4K into a viable gaming device, it could. But I'm not sure that Apple really expects people to play games on the thing, despite saying that it can.

Apple regularly announces new games that are coming to Apple Arcade. But the images showing the games very rarely show them running on a big-screen TV. And I think that's telling.

I also think that it's time everyone admits the Apple TV 4K should stick to what it does best. It's a great streaming device and the best way to watch content.

That's more than enough reason to buy one. Incredible price hike aside, of course.