Engadget reports that one of their trusted tipster has uncovered evidence which hints at the fact that Apple may finally be following suit of Xbox Live. New code in the iOS 4.3 beta 3 firmware suggests that the Apple TV may soon support online gaming. More on that, after the break.
The references in question here are "ATVGames" and "ATVThunder" which might possibly hint at some controller or leaderboards like the Game Center, a way to schedule games, proabably multiplayer, and a store front like the App Store.
What's actually interesting, and rather exciting, are two particular strings: ".apple.appletv.play.live.thunder" and ".play.archive.thunder" however it can not be said for sure now what these strings actually mean.
Given the fact that Apple TV's minimum storage capacity is about 8GB, the company might look to streaming not entirely unlike how OnLive works; as according to the tipster, OpenGL is mature and implemented throughly so much so that streaming low bandwidth data and computing locally could be possible, however, that's merely theoretical and there's nothing in the code to prove it.
Two more codenames and other strings have also come up relating to Apple TV: Sedona and Flagstaff. As it refers to director, episode, season, and the like, it is believed that Sedona is all about video merchandising and streaming, while for Flagstaff, aside from permitting Account Types and Merchants, there are no detailed discoveries. One rather interesting finding is the feature_remote_screensavers, through which you can supposedly use screensavers from other devices, such as your Mac.
Also, Alex Hisrbrunner has used a Harmony remote to find hidden Apple TV commands which are similar to iOS functions but not normally possible with the standard Apple TV remote, such as wiggling icons which can be restored using the directional pad. See the video, down below.
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