Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eridrus | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is the engineer in me talking, but I'm personally a bit surprised that this is still a thing and Google hasn't invested in a system to let you play Android games on your TV easily.

They could get further into the home entertainment category and probably drive higher priced sales to the Play store.

View on HN

> Maybe this is the engineer in me talking, but I'm personally a bit surprised that this is still a thing and Google hasn't invested in a system to let you play Android games on your TV easily.

Remember this?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of...

A failure.

ChromeOS will run Android applications. I don't think there is that much room or market for yet another console system. Even the XBox one isn't selling as much as Microsoft wanted; the PS VITA is barely selling outside Japan and the Switch may be the last console for Nintendo if it fails.

Clearly HN even hates the suggestion, but the thing about an Android-based console would be that it comes with all of the mobile games built in. Some even already have controller support. You could even imagine a "console" that was just a dock for your phone and existing wireless controllers that hit the same price point as a Chromecast.

These things all exist in the Android ecosystem, but they're either built by 3rd parties or not really promoted.

> Clearly HN even hates the suggestion

You are suggesting https://www.android.com/tv/?

You might be jumping to the wrong conclusion about why your first post got a downvote. I don't know, and didn't downvote, but I imagine it could be due to talking exclusively about Android & Google in a thread about Nintendo dev kits...

Android TV is one way to look at it, but there are others.

I probably phrased it badly, but I am actually curious about what people think Nintendo's place in the market should be.

Making a new $300 console targeted at casual gamers doesn't seem the wisest move these days.

Ah, thanks, that clarifies your question for me. I've developed both mobile (including Android) & console (including Wii) games, but I still don't really know how to answer your question.

I would probably say that the Wii was clearly targeted at casual gamers a couple of years before the first Google app store even existed, so this is not a new trend. I would probably also say that since the iOS & Play stores recently exceeded Nintendo's revenues, doubling down on casual gaming may be the right move or even the only market to go after.

I don't know how to claim what Nintendo's place in the market "should" be, but there's no denying they've long been one of the dominating players, and that they still are, even though they've had a decade of decline. The Mario & Zelda franchises are still well loved and unrivaled in longevity by any other series.

I guess Nintendo's play is to make exclusive games for the Switch and hope that it's enough to get users to buy the console and then hope that enough people buy it that developers are willing to make games for that platform.

Which I guess is everyone's console strategy, but it feels like a questionable one when there are so many casual alternatives on mobile. It also doesn't seem like a very consumer friendly strategy to me. With the Wii at least they tried something new and there actually seemed to be a reason to make a new console besides making money for Nintendo.

Are you planning on making a game for the Switch? Are you waiting to see what sales numbers are like? What would it take for you to make a game there?

I'm not even going to joke about anyone making an Android TV focused game.

Yep, I think that's spot on, exclusive games for their console, and right in line with their past behavior.

No plans to develop for switch or Android tv. More than anything having to do with the consoles, just because I'm doing web dev at the moment not games. Picking a platform is a big problem for developers, and why so many release on all platforms, so I'm glad I'm not worried about it.

I enjoyed wii dev for a stupid reason: because you had to do so much old school low level kind of stuff, there was some nostalgia in it. But it was also painful and nowhere near as nice as Xbox dev. Sounds like the switch dev env is modern.

The Ouya's SoC was out of date by the time they launched. I wouldn't say that the idea is invalid based off of that experience.

What are you talking about? There have been many attempts to make an "Android Console". They've pretty much all flopped.

Games made for a touchpad and finger don't translate well to controllers, just like controller games don't always translate well to touch pads.

Sounds like you are describing an NVIDIA Shield TV: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/

If this version had existed before I bought my Steam Link, I would probably have this instead of my Steam Link + Roku + Google Home.

It seems like the only reason to get the Switch is platform exclusives, which has always felt like a gamer-hostile move.

I'm not sure what you mean by only reason. You definitely can't take your steam box on the go. Every console has exclusives, and PC has plenty, so it's not Nintendo being unusual to keep their own IP on their own hardware.

There are mobile consoles, they are called phones and tablets. Android and especially iOS are making a huge dent in the gaming market but most "hard-core" gamers don't want to admit it. There is a mountain load of horrible games on mobile platforms but a ton of real gems also and that's good enough for a ton of people IMO.

I agree, I'm just surprised that Google isn't pushing it as a serious console alternative for gaming on your TV. One of the common complaints is that Android users don't pay, but I feel like a lot of that is price anchoring; if you anchor to typical console prices you can probably raise the price users are willing to pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com