Ouya console

I’ve heard it’s pretty hackable and they’ve advertised (EA) games that haven’t even been made for it yet…

tbfh I had a nightmare about it last night. orz

To be honest I’m not too sure about this one. I agreed with the majority of what was said – the brain-drain of excellence in the development in games turning to mobile and app development because the standards of AAA studios is too high and how AAA studios are too afraid to take risks and be more experimental…

But, and correct me if I’m wrong, everything released on the OUYA is free to play… so how are smaller and more experimental studios supposed to make any money?

It is at the end of the day, a market and those who want to succeed still need a decent wage and if they’re really good, profit from their hard work; does this mean only hobbyists will release games on the OUYA? Saying something is "open source" doesn’t nessecarily mean it’s free, it just means the source code is available for free, but as far as I can tell, the designers are implying all games on the console will be free. Where’s the profit? Where’s the market? Do I totally have the wrong end of the stick here?

For me, a console (as we’ve known it) is a platform – not just the hardware. I.e. store services, network services, business rules, implicit marketing, quality control. The reason you take seriously the idea of specifically targeting xbox, wii or ps3 instead of aiming for the more open platforms is that it comes with some guarantees – harder to pirate, less competitors, guaranteed effort on the (money rich) platform holder to market the hardware, get it into retail, build up a user base, create some flagship games. You also know the machine is there for a generation and will be very powerful on launch to last a decade.

Of course as a consumer I see also the similar benefits of a dedicated games machine in OuYa and I recognise the power of an open source model (good and bad). I get that it will attempt to loosely piggy back on android games not specifically made for it. But I worry that it’s just a throw away hardware only thing – hoping the ecosystem of consumers and developers will "just come". I worry it’s an over promise even for the meagre specs. I worry that there is no well funded effort to create a serious piece of infrastructure or consumer base.

So I think it competes poorly with dedicated consoles and will be outclassed in open gaming and will be better subscribed by your smart phone. I’d much prefer to see Google or Apple release some wireless controllers and a game service for their "Tv" offerings instead.

On a side note, I really want this to succeed.

If it doesn’t its not just OUYA that suffers, but every crowd funded project thereafter. 5 million is a lot of money to waste and invest on an imaginary console.

I understand that games will be free to try, not fully free, with some sort of app store where full titles can be bought