【Pachinko Angel】

Two of the most widely owned video game controllers on Pachinko Angelthe planet will soon play nice with Apple products, starting (and presumably not ending) with Apple TV.

Support for Microsoft's Xbox One controller and Sony's DualShock 4 controller will be added to Apple TV with the forthcoming tvOS update in fall 2019. Apple already supports a number of Bluetooth game controllers under its MFi program, but lots of households already have PlayStation and Xbox controllers lying around.

The expanded controller support ought to be arriving around the same time as the Apple Arcade subscription service. It's important to see Apple aligning its own interests with the broader market like this, since Apple Arcade is making a play for the entire gaming audience. Even -- perhaps especially -- the kinds of players who own one or more consoles already.

Up until now, almost all Apple-supported controllers under the MFi program have been missing a key feature: thumbstick buttons (or L3/R3, to use the lingo). Many of the games released in the past decade make heavy use of these buttons, so there's always an adjustment when one of those games makes the leap to an Apple platform.

It's more of a problem in recent times thanks to the arrival of apps that support game streaming from PlayStation 4 and, for PC gamers, Steam, to Apple screens. And that's not even mentioning upcoming services like Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud, which take more of a Netflix-style (or Apple TV+, if you prefer) approach, beaming your games out from the cloud.

With no official support for console-standard controllers -- there's only one MFi option right now with L3/R3 buttons -- streaming the most popular games to an Apple screen has been quite a challenge. It's not clear if the MFi program requirements are changing for everyone (we've asked Apple) but letting PlayStation and Xbox controllers in to play gives gamers a lot more options.

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