Is anyone mildly annoyed at the amount of apps that *can* support Android TV, but don't?

by steamfishandrice

I'm looking through the Play Store for more games that I can install on my Nvidia Shield, since friends and family and I all like to play games on the thing. I've come across so many apps that have controller support and are fully navigable with a controller, and some that even have controller button prompts and instructions in their app. With all that, you technically just have to mark your app as Android TV compatible, throw on some nice artwork and bam — now you support Android TV.

Yet, there are so many apps that don't do this. Notably missing is Punch Club, which was launched just a few weeks ago. Shovel Knight and Surgeon Simulator are two other notable ones. LIMBO is a big one, although they claim their reason for not giving LIMBO any sort of love is because they're focusing all of their attention on their new title INSIDE for XB1.

Then you have your apps that work perfectly fine with Android TV, are able to be installed to Android TV through the web version of the Play Store, they even show up on Leanback launcher, yet they don't show up in the Play Store on Android TV. Alto's Adventure does exactly this (beautiful game though!). As a bonus its also fully playable with the regular remotes for Android TV.

I just feel there are so many titles that could be on Android TV and aren't. It's such a good platform and the only thing it's missing is the apps to really support it. It's slowly picking up, but it could be so much better.

Andrroid

The best you can do is contact the devs. We're in a chicken/egg situation right now, much as regular android was years ago. The benefit this time around is that the ecosystem already exists and the devs already exist. We just have to show them that there are customers that want Android TV support.

steamfishandrice

And to throw it in there, there are apps that would work great on Android TV, but are actually unavailable, and probably within reason. Sonic 4 Episode 1 and 2 have controller support but haven't been updated in years. They've basically been abandoned by SEGA. Cordy and Cordy 2 are nice platformers that would probably do pretty decent on Android TV. Jetpack Joyride was ported to pretty much everything you can game on, so I was surprised to see that it too had no Android TV support. Its not a favorite of mine but it did have its popular run.

TheSubversive

I have both an AndroidTV and a new AppleTV that I got when it came out. The proliferation of apps on the AppleTV is unbelievable and even more so when compared to the AndroidTV.

It seems like there are constantly, like daily, new apps coming out for AppleTV. Meanwhile, every once in a while I'll hear about a new AndroidTV app.

shakajumbo

XCOM :(

bfandreas

It takes a couple of things to actually appear in the Android TV playstore.

Firstly you need to tell Google Play that you don't need a touch screen in the MANIFEST or some other XML ridden descriptor.

Then you need to upload it. Below a label that says "Beware of leopard" you can check a box "Submit to Android TV Playstore".

Believe it or not: That one is ACTUALLY curated. Google kicks things out that don't fit their control scheme. If something is perfectly usable with a mouse it still will be kicked out. Has anyone seen Hearthstone in the Android TV Playstore lately? It was there a couple of months ago but now only installable via the browser.

The sheer amount of idiotic things Google did with Android TV makes me wonder if they set it up to fail.

Bananq

Not mildly. But it's already better when you use side launcher. At least you can add some apps on your own. Some may work, some may not.

I know it's not how it's supposed to work but hey, it could've been worse. I think...

serpentxx

From what I understand, for an app to even display on the AndroidTV playstore and the main launcher, it simply needs to start in landscape mode, Take ESFileExplorer, literally the same app that's on smartphones, thus why it's a nightmare to navigate with a TV remote