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Ouya – the Android games console

Ouya - the Android based games console, coming in 2013 for $99

This may not be news to some of you, but there’s an Android-based console in the works for 2013, and the company behind it just launched a kickstarter campaign.

It looks like a brilliant, left-field idea. An inexpensive ($99) console that runs free games, paid for either by in-app purchases or advertising just like Android mobile phones. The controller will have a touchpad as well as traditional joystick and buttons, allowing you to use whichever input method suits the game best, thus neatly bypassing a common issue with ports from mobile to console. In another radical departure from usual industry standards the console is built to be hackable: both console and controllers can be easily dismantled, and some modifications won’t void the warranty.

Could this be the answer to where the console market is being driven by the increased popularity of cheap, mobile games? I just reckon it might. It’s also going to be a big potential boost for Android against Apple. Shame some idiot gave it name that sounds like a banker having sex.

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Matt Thrower

Matt is a board gamer who plays video games when he can't find anyone similarly obsessive to play against, which is frequently. The inability to get out and play after the birth of his first child lead him to start writing about games as a substitute for playing them. He founded FortressAT.com and writes there and at NoHighScores.com

7 thoughts to “Ouya – the Android games console”

  1. Wow … that’s quite brilliant, actually. $950,000 is a lot of money to ask for. They need to have ~1,000 consoles ordered to make their Kickstarter. Should be interesting to see if it makes it.

  2. I can’t see this thing taking off (as much as it makes sense that it should).

    1. I don’t see this sucker going for $100 (with controller). I’m sure they did their homework, but if they are relying on a small margin of profit, it could tank. Or worse, residuals from the new game store.

    2. They aren’t pushing Google Play. Counter productive I know, the agenda is to cultivate a game centric store for this device. But this is like Tesla Motors touting it’s electrical efficiency of kinetic motors, without mentioning that it’s for a car (the ones they make for example). If they can’t say first & foremost, “All your shit on your phone [you’ve already payed for] works on here!”, then it’s all moot. Ouya needs to push the idea that you can (also) just sign in with your Google account & all your stuff is there.

    3. Hackable isn’t a marketable word for investors. It’s fucking awesome for me (as a consumer), but I’d bet potential investors/developers are thinking “no control”, “piracy” & that means “no money”.

    I love the idea of this, but frankly I’d rather them just sell the controller & the service. My crystal ball is telling me that TV manufacturers are about to go all Android (built-in) & that will be the death of devices like this.

  3. I’m on the fence about it. Most of the games I play on my phone I don’t particularly want to play on a television.

    That said, they’re averaging about $1k/minute at the moment, so people are clearly interested. Already at $132k as of 10:38am.

  4. Dead trigger, shadowgun, riptide, asphalt. There’s definitely the games that translate well to console play but android is sometimes very finicky, especially 4.0 and tegra which is still undergoing serious debug.

  5. I’m really excited about this – glad to see it got funded. I’ve been itching to get into Android gaming, but couldn’t see myself ever getting into using a touchscreen. It just seems so inefficient, both in terms of hand placement and simplicity of inputs, when compared to a controller (or a keyboard and mouse). If traditional consoles are dying, this type of plan just seems like the logical next step.

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