OUYA - Android console

ninzel

Veteran
So now even the Raspberry market is getting fragmented? ;)

They better have a good and safe store ... but at the very least it will be another nice box for XBMC et al.
 
So now even the Raspberry market is getting fragmented? ;)

They better have a good and safe store ... but at the very least it will be another nice box for XBMC et al.

One pirate store app and WHAM!! instant everything free!!

You know what would be crazy? If that thing proves to be so successful, that we will be seeing many versions including many very powerful Ouya successors that will start cannibalizing from MS and Sony next gen and much faster than any tablet or smart phone would. I can see that rhyme well with casuals.

That would be a very sudden twist of events :D

Of course, I dont believe technology to be up there to compete the high fidelity we will be seeing on a big screen from next gen consoles.
I expect small budget titles from tiny devs and indies and tablet/smartphone ports. Big devs wont want to risk big budget titles considering how hackable and pirate friendly this thing is,
But who knows how things will turn out?
We saw Wii kicking the ass of better products this gen. And casuals appear addicted to tablet/phone games. Kids could be excited with this thing.
We will see :)
 
Looks to me like a pretty decent cloud gaming terminal with quite a bit more oomph than onlive and the ability to run Android and all its capabilities: internal+network file system access for pictures&videos, casual games, google integration, etc.

For $99, it's a steal. Especially when we consider that Nexus Q costs the triple.

AFAIK, Nexus Q only has a couple of 20W OPAMPs for analog audio over this. Hardly worth the extra price.
 
The hard part is the infrastructure, how do you get games in the store, how are you payed for it, do they require ESRB, how much test do they do, what do they charge for a submission etc etc.

It's my understanding that both Apple and Google are licensed to transfer money, and you really buy from the creator, with Apple/Google taking a cut. My understanding is that having that status is prohibitively expensive from a legal standpoint unless you're moving a lot of money.

MS are not a licensed money transferrer and the way Live works is you set a wholesale price then MS sets a retail price and buys the copies off the creator (I assume as they are sold), because of the wholesaler/retailer relationship there are more hoops to jump through for submission/price changes etc etc.

I'm interested to see if they can put everything together, and have enough process to not get swamped by crap and not enough to discourage people from publishing on their platform.
 
The hard part is the infrastructure, how do you get games in the store, how are you payed for it, do they require ESRB, how much test do they do, what do they charge for a submission etc etc.

It's my understanding that both Apple and Google are licensed to transfer money, and you really buy from the creator, with Apple/Google taking a cut. My understanding is that having that status is prohibitively expensive from a legal standpoint unless you're moving a lot of money.

MS are not a licensed money transferrer and the way Live works is you set a wholesale price then MS sets a retail price and buys the copies off the creator (I assume as they are sold), because of the wholesaler/retailer relationship there are more hoops to jump through for submission/price changes etc etc.

I'm interested to see if they can put everything together, and have enough process to not get swamped by crap and not enough to discourage people from publishing on their platform.



I'll guess it's just like Tegra Zone: the app has a list of games that are supported by/optimized for your device, together with a description, pictures and videos, and then there's just a hyperlink to Google Play for the game you want.

It's a painless extra step, especially considering the price.




They now have more than 3 million dollars, which they achieved in a day. I wouldn't be surprised if they get over 10 million by the time the kickstarter period ends.

I think that at this point they should reach nVidia and try to see the possibility in getting Wayne/Tegra 4 in there. Maybe there's even a Tegra 3 pin-compatible version of Wayne. I bet nVidia would be terribly interested in that too.
 
I don't see bite into traditional consoles markets but I still think it' an interesting approach.
May be it could have some success in emerging markets?
I also wonder if it could attract some developers like the (few) guys developing Grim Dawn, those that developed Path of Exile ie some independent PC developers that still develop core games.

Overall I'm really curious about how the dev community (not the big editors) will react to this.

As a side note does anybody figured out where is the touch-pad on their controller? It sounds like a neat addition to the design.
 
I don't see this working. How does the company get money? From a cut of the hardware, they'll be open to clones just as IBM was. From a cut of the software, they'll need massive distribution which'll need people to buy it. And what's the incentive to buy an Android box over a traditional console or a touch device? The games on it are going to average at a very low bar with everyone free to publish, meaning core gamers are going to find little of interest. Like Google Play. And getting an expensive, high quality title will hit the marketing wall that Android currently has. Who'll invest a $million on developing a high-quality download title for an Android console when the same money will get a clearly visible feature on PS360? High invesment on Android games for touch screens makes sense as there's already a massive market, and I forsee the Android gaming growth coming from there. First games will see more and more investment to compete for attention, and then tablets with HDMI out and controller support will move the gaming to the TV. But I see too much of a jump at the moment to go straight to Android games on TV. The quality's not there to be competitive with PS360, and the install base won't be there to target this box directly unlses people are buying it for another reason.

I guess an idea here is an Android computer with games, like Raspberry Pi and the 8bitters. I guess it can sell on that merit as a Tivo box etc. and also provide a games portal. But I can't see home gamers wanting an Android console playing Android quality games that aren't yet getting the investment. If the box isn't being advertised on TV and stocked in retail stores etc., won't it have little more appeal at large than those many cheap Chinese gaming knockoffs?

In short, who's the target audience, how are they going to be sold this box, and how with the software market work to ensure developers are maintaining a viable platform?
 
Like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc?
Yes. There are squillions of PC manufacturers who produced clones who you can't name because they all folded as the competition was insane, and IBM themselves lost out their own computer market.

At 99 dollars, everyone.
You can't sell something just on account of it being cheap. It has to have value. At $99, this box is not throwaway money like the Raspberry Pi. Someone would have to buy it for a particularly purpose, either as a Tivo box or a games console or whatever. And as a games console, we're currently looking at a box lacking software and an install base. That's the chicken-and-egg conundrum facing everyone wanting to enter the console space. Certainly I have no interest, and I question if most existing console owners are interested. The games may be cheap, but the quality is probably going to be as cheap. That leaves everyone who hasn't bought an expensive current-gen console. Who of them is going to want to play Gameloft FPSes? There's going to be an audience for sure, but it needs to be large enough and appear fast enough to create a living ecosystem of content creation and consumption. If it doesn't get a larger enough, game buying audience quickly enough, developers will avoid the machine. That's a current issue with Android and developers starting to give it a wide bearth in favour of iPad. The only market I can see this attracting are the poor who can't afford a PS360 so will buy a cheap games machine, and the poor aren't a particular healithy market to target for selling content to. For those wanting a dual-stick controller experience, PS360 offer excellent software, and PC offers cheap Indie games.

For developers, touch devices offer a massive market to have a fighting chance of making something back (and don't forget that most apps created get barely anything for the time and effort invested by the developers), while the PC offers completely open development. PS3 and 360 are restricted to full developer but 360 offers XNA for indies and Sony are introducing PSMobile. So I'm not sure of the attraction of this Android console other than possibly being able to target it while you target other Android devices. But if the included SDK isn't Android and isn't portable, then it's a closed system of an unknonwn install base.
 
Yes. There are squillions of PC manufacturers who produced clones who you can't name because they all folded as the competition was insane, and IBM themselves lost out their own computer market.
And yet... there is still a PC market. Question, how many employees does OUYA have? How much profit do they need to pay the bills?

You can't sell something just on account of it being cheap
Kindle Fire says hello.

this box is not throwaway money like the Raspberry Pi
It is still low enough to be an impulse buy for many people. Plus, it is not just a gaming device...

we're currently looking at a box lacking software and an install base.
It will most likely have 80,000+ on day one, then I imagine you could count Tegra 3 android devices... including the Nexus 7.

But if the included SDK isn't Android and isn't portable, then it's a closed system of an unknonwn install base.
It runs Android. I'm sure development will be similar to Tegra Zone.
 
You say 80K like that's impressive. By that metric the HP Touchpad and Blackberry Playbook are successful and the Vita is a home run.

This is a textbook example of how Kickstarter makes selling an idea way easier than it would be to sell the actual product. Any money on this thing is a complete shot in the dark. By the time it actually launches 360s and PS3s will probably be like $150 and generic Android 4.1 boxes will all have quad cores, Mali GPUs, and 2GBs of RAM for less than $80.
 
The 80k is before it is even publicly available.... :rolleyes:

And how many Tegra 3 phones are there? Will there be by launch? How many Nexus 7s will have been sold by then?
 
None of which have Ouya controllers or access to the Ouya store? You can't pretend like Ouya and Tegra 3 are the same thing to developers.
 
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