Ouya Android console up for pre-order on Amazon
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You guys are missing the point with the content argument. Developing for consoles has generally been a ridiculously expensive endeavor. This breaks that mold. Also what makes you think that someone won't buy a console just to play one (really good) game?
No, it doesn't. This shows that you can do some consumer facing and software development around an outdated commodity platform and release it. That is nontrivial and the Ouya team certainly deserves credit for it, but it is not on the same level as what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do to produce their consoles. And it shows in the final product.
Also what makes you think that someone won't buy a console just to play one (really good) game?
I feel like you're wishcasting, which seems to be commonplace in Ouya discussions. What "really good" game is going to be a killer app for Ouya? The platform has very small reach and I can't see anyone with a truly promising title making it an Ouya exclusive.
They're giving away the razor here, and their blades aren't better than anyone else's.
There's little defense for emulating the majority of games people actually emulate older consoles to play, aside from "I want it for free and no one will stop me."
It's true that there are plenty of folks who pirate chrono trigger via emulation but there are also plenty who want to play the more obscure titles out there.
Most of the games where copyright has bounced around are quite abandoned and not resold at all; in the "abandonware" situation I'd be much more receptive to the idea of emulation to play them. But those are generally not the games that most people pick up emulators to play.
The companies that bankrolled the entire thing are still there (or--shocker--have been subsumed into another company, which spent money to acquire its assets). Your excuses are poor ones designed to paper over that you want something for free and can take it so you will. At least the guy who says "fuck 'em, I can take it and nobody will stop me" is honest.
Which does not mean that the Ouya cannot be good. (Basic microeconomics has a lot more to say on that topic.) But breathless cheering about this project "shattering the mold" doesn't really reflect reality.
It is a problematic situation for Ouya, because they have no compelling reason to stay on the platform once you sniff the slightest success.
The only place it might have an advantage will be for games that allow third party modding. Games with a side market for community DLC could be an interesting idea.
If you are an indie dev who releases a game for the Ouya and gets some respectable sales you are quickly going to do the math on how many more sales you would get from a Xbox/PS version. As a result consumers are more likely to think "Oh, an Ouya game. I'll just wait 3 months for it to show up on Xbox".
In the rare, doubt-it'll-happen case of a hit game coming out first on Ouya, I would bet we'd see it on Steam, for cheaper, within six months--because porting will, by necessity, be That Easy.
Ouya could, depending on tech stack get a port in that situation (and I've considered it for my own project because I'll already have a gamepad API for the Windows/Mac release), but it will never be a leading platform that people actively target because the market share is infinitesmal. There are too many better options in front of it.
EDIT: Also, bear in mind that Ouya isn't doing anything groundbreaking with their gamepad stuff - the gamepad APIs already exist in Android 4.x. The only Ouya-specific stuff I have seen is in their purchasing layer.
But it is purely a numbers game: if you've got a chance at 0.05% of Steam consumers you've blown away the 25% or even 50% of Ouya owners who might be interested in your game and it's not even close. And that means that nobody's going to write exclusives for Ouya and so the value prop for buying one, outside of a small perfectly-targeted segment that doesn't have a console and wants to play games in the living room and doesn't care about established franchises and is really really cheap, dies on the vine.
For the Ouya to "smoke" other consoles in sales, it will have to offer something unique, and that looks like a really tall order at this point.
But this is besides the point, ask anyone what sells nintendo consoles, its not the consoles. Its the amazing 1st party games.
The N64 particularly was pushing the envelope for consumer hardware at release and both the NES and SNES were quite advanced for their time (though their USA releases lagged quite a bit behind the Japanese/Famicom releases, which means at the time of US release they weren't quite as impressive).
They certainly stopped focusing on advanced hardware (in the raw CPU-power sense) post-N64 though.
N64 was a bit more modern, you're correct, because they went with the SGI/MIPS, but I was distracted from Mario 64 by GLQuake 16 player LAN deathmatches, so..
It wasn't until Commander Keen (circa 1990) that PC systems were capable of doing these sorts of games justice (and then just barely) and the videocard you used in such a system would cost significantly more than an entire NES/SNES console.
Of course there are other systems like the Amiga (my first two systems were a C64 and then later an Amiga 500) and the Atari ST that did have more game-friendly hardware but they were also nowhere close in terms of price range to the consoles and while more game-friendly than PCs still never quite achieved the pure tilemap-scrolling bliss of the dedicated consoles.
Of course, after the explosion of 3D graphics with the Rendition and the original Voodoo, PCs took off in terms of raw gaming power and have left console systems in the dust since, but it wasn't always that way.
I am thoroughly disappointed by this project. Part of the vision was to offer console gaming, but with a weak GPU and highly latency IO it is impossible to write any games that resemble the quality of a console game.
Unlike the Wii there is no compensating feature like motion sensing. Additionally this makes it impossible to write games such as the Just Dance, which are extremely popular with casual audiences.
Ultimately, I think Ouya compromised by pushing a technically simpler and underpowered design. This will bite them when they realize that nobody will write real games for a platform that can't handle it.
It is not clear why anybody would want a $100 console that plays no real games when they can get a $150 Wii.
It's fantastically annoying, because MythTV+XBMC would be a perfect TV watching solution. As it is, my best option for a set top box is to buy an Xbox 360, and I don't particularly feel like doing that.
Doubtful. I think this will be a niche console for geeks, because of one reason: Content.
It's a vicious cycle. With no content, customers won't want it, and with no customers, content creators won't create any games or apps for it.
Still, it looks very promising, I'm just unsure if developers will get content onto this thing.
I'm rooting for it but you're right about the main challenges. Let's hope they can solve them.
Its already on Android. The port would not be hard to do (if any).
This platform will grow like crazy, because the tools are open source, and Android is a very strong brand.
They've been working on it, but it still doesn't compare well to the PC version, or even the Xbox release. People are willing to accept a bit of a gimped version of their phone, because it's running on their phone. On a console (even one that costs less than a phone did) I think they'll have some trouble overcoming that.
It could happen, but a proper version of Minecraft for Ouya would take some effort. If they get enough adoption for Mojang to bother, that could be the tipping point that pushes it to popularity.
While there's a lot of Minecraft that's certainly CPU-bound, rendering at higher resolutions has next to nothing to do with CPU speed. The bulk of your rendering work is done by the GPU, and the GPU in Ouya is more than capable of rendering Minecraft at HD resolutions.
"Grow like crazy" seems a little optimistic. Android has grown in large part because it dominates carrier showrooms, where most "normal" people buy their phones. I also wouldn't call it a strong brand, and you may have noticed that "Android" is mentioned much less in advertising, with companies now advertising their brands (e.g., Samsung Galaxy) more often than not.
The OUYA is also under-powered - a Tegra 3 is already old tech. Mobile tech, which the OUYA is built on, is growing much too quickly for this thing to gain much traction.
The mobile appstores are so saturated that it's impossible to get noticed, at least at the start that will make Ouya attractive to developers even if it has a smaller customer base.
Don't get me wrong, I would buy one of these anyway, but I just hope to see some developers hop onto it, which seems unlikely at this point.
IIRC the controller has a touchpad (not a touchscreen) in the middle, but I have no idea what anyone's going to do with it.
Discovery will play a massive part in the success of games, and therefore of the whole platform.
(if anyone wants to try it, there's a demo at that website!)
That's pretty cool. Count me in.
I think it sits in its own niche. Budget gaming. A competitor for Nintendo's offering, perhaps. But certainly not a competitor for either Microsoft's or Sony's offering.
I think you're more likely to own an Ouya or both it and a "major" console. It would not replace them.
My impression is that they want to become the center of Indie Game development.
But yeah, that does seem to be their objective. Hopefully they get their stuff together and put out a solid SDK and set of dev tools and simulator (their current release is at least a start).
If you downvoted me because you object to my complaint about the entry fee, allow me to educate you. If you downvoted me because you think Ouya is awesome or you own Ouya shares, more power to you.
Anyway, a company like Ouya co-opting the game jam phenomenon (not to mention the term) for pure commercial, money-making greedy purposes is offensive. Allow me to explain in detail:
The events normally associated with the term Game Jam are:
a) free
b) not about prizes or competition
c) intentionally inclusive
For a few examples, just google 'game jam', or check out these pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_jam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludum_Dare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Game_Jam
The whole spirit and philosophy behind game jams is to encourage anyone and everyone to creatively participate in the creation of video games, regardless of commercial viability, tools used, race, gender, age, or creed.
In comparison, the Ouya game jam:
a) Required a $99 purchase of an Ouya console to enter - EVEN THOUGH - Ouya is supposedly an Android based platform and any functioning Android game should be able to run on the Ouya.
b) Included prizes and judges being handed out at the discretion of Ouya and/or Kill Screen
c) Required all games to be Ouya games, not Android games or simply 'games that can run on the Ouya'.
These are not minor distinctions. This is important. This is a corporation feeding off the efforts of the community without giving anything back (unless you count the pittance of a few prizes to be handed out to the 'winners').
The Ouya 'game jam' is a contest. And I have no problem with contests: They are a good way to promote interest in your platform. Microsoft ran multiple successful contests for XBox Live Indie Games called 'Dream Build Play' that produced lots of great games.
The Ouya runs an additional API that provides a game menu similar to that of the Playstation's XMB or the XBox 360's Guide, as well as support for its controllers and hardware-specific features. Games for Ouya need to be able to support that API. Games not targeted directly to Ouya may not be able to adequately support the controllers and hardware.
(I do not have a dev kit, so I don't know the specifics.)
I imagine most of the buyers will be people who already have consoles or people with no real interest in consoles or hackers wanting to repurpose it.
http://www.ouyaconsole.com/ouya-software/
This Amazon discussion has a mirror of the list in case Ouya's site goes down (it's loading slowly for me):
http://www.amazon.com/Games-availables-from-day-one/forum/Fx...
The official site is here: http://www.ouya.tv/
In a similar thrust, those here who think that because it's an open and easy to develop for platform don't remember the lackluster sales of many prior platforms that lead into the market with emulation (which gave them huge libraries).
Most of the non-emulator software was quite frankly, lackluster. Those consoles counted their sales in the tens of thousands of units, not in the millions.