There will be a ton of dross but there' also a MUCH higher chance of getting genuinely interesting 'different' games, well I say much, i think you have to understand how hard it is to develop for a mainstream console - You need a development kit and you need a license if you are using middleware, this comes to tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds

For this? Nothing

If its a typical two stick analogue controller then they are a well trodden paradigm and i think most developers would know perfectly fine how to work to its strengths having had the gamut of possible controllers available on the pc for years, the hardware is through an established OS so feeling where you can push it is a straightforward affair and like all console hardware will mature in time

Developing for a phone has been a great new adventure for a lot of bedroom coders because they could get their stuff to people who weren't sat at their computers, but a phone's hardware being sorely lacking is pretty much a given, this is a big thing for these people

I'm guessing a difference between this and xbox though would be that the majority of xbox owners don't use and probably are barely aware of XBLIG, where as the ouchie will have the vast majority as people who want to play these 'indy' games.

So I guess I've invested in this thing though I like the most of you saw it as redundant from the off. Freethinker has also stuck his finger in the pie and we both agree there's nothing to stop us right now using a dualaxis and a video out with our existing android phones to play some games on our TVs.

It's also important to note that despite having more than a few games on our android phones we also don't play them very much. However having an rooted android OS on my phone has allowed me to use Chainfire to overclock the built in GPU and run Tegra demo's. Freethinker himself has more than likely set up every device with a Tegra chipset. We both agree Tegra looks amazing, even on a GPU that doesn't handle it. So we should expect the graphics on this to be significantly better than those of mobile phone releases, on any device. 

The thing about Tegra games is that they are on the Play store. And if you install one or try to install one to a supported device you're going to get a message that says 'you are a n00b for trying to run this' and the game/app will force quit.

With these factors in mind I see no reason why, the Ouya which will be part of the OHA, (Open Handset Alliance) won't be able to download Play Store games. There's a touch pad after all and I suspect that's what it's for. So it's a valid question: what are these Ouya people on about when they ask people what games they want to see? The most obvious and simple answer is to support the controller. And naturally if I am right about this there are already a tonne of emulators on play for every available platform going. Of course someone is going to have to make an optimised version for the Ouya.

The games that will support the controller will be available through an app which gives access to Ouya adapted games. If you look at how the Humble Bundle installs an app which is a client that takes in your details and gives you access to everything you've purchased via Humble Bundle you'll get an idea about my assumptions. Most notably for this is when you go on the Play Store then those games you've purchased on HB are not purchased on there.

Plainly what I can assume is you will be able to play your existing purchases on the Ouya, however unless the developers of games have an agreement with their publish (Ouya) to ensure that Play purchases are carried over to Ouya you will have to pay for games optimised for the Ouya pad and/or Tegra GPU. I can't see that happening as what Ouya are wanting from this optimisation is essentially more code to cope with the pad, and that means more man hours and inevitably a cost to the developer.

Regardless, of whether a game is sold on Ouya's service or googles service (Play Store) it can still be optimised for the console. The only difference between the stores is how much the publisher keeps. As you will have noticed the split that they take is different.

The good thing I can envision from all these assumptions is that Ouya will be it's own platform. Now the discussion of the platform begins. As stated it is open. Open doesn't mean your games will be free. Open hardware means I don't have to buy an Ouya, I can assemble my own and install the OS and the app that gets me on to their store. I can also assemble a pad, or (most likely) use my dualshock. Which is how I expect any Ouya optimised games to be developed, with a dualshock. I mean, it's got bluetooth and as many buttons the leftovers are simply not used, or maybe for debug menus, I don't know! Sure it doesn't have the touchpad, but as stated our assumption is that this is to support existing and future Play Store purchases on the most part. Though I don't rule out Ouya optimised games making use of gesture controls along with tactile sticks and buttons. Furthermore if I think my home assembled Ouya is better aesthetically and in component parts then I can then manufacture and sell my Ouya console. Think about the intentions they had when they invented 3DO and I am sure you will get what I mean. And you now get what they mean by it being open.

There's finally the 'what if it flops?' notion. Sure the Dingoo, Whizz and Pandora haven't exactly taken off but as Freethinker pointed out they have active communities and there will be homebrew market making use of the pad and imaginably if the pad sends the same binary bits about its buttons as those mapped the same on the dualshock then it's even easier for anyone to create using the unity platform or native code a decent looking game on a high spec Android OS console. (It's not a phone!)

Sorry to drag on but being an investor I am probably the biggest critic however I am prepared for a fall. But with all this crowdfunding proving its appeal and popularity I can see the Ouya team approaching a private investor for some real venture capital.

*deepbreath* *considers editing* *submits draft*

Haha that took you a while didnt it

Ilike how you see it as open in that manner, it's a good way of looking at it, i just come from the bedroom coder angle, i can use Unity with it like i can my phone and get my games on a telly, for those people who arent so tech inclined to fuck about with their phones to do it, which is amazing from my perspective

I am not on about bedroom coders. Many AAA producing studio's develop for phones.

@gunn it didn't take that long, it was just brain fart after brain fart. Franklin's brain farts have less gusto (o;

But I really want to play Fruit Ninja on a 40 inch screen without having to touch the screen.

Mod74 wrote:

XNA is fine for fooling around with but it's not an answer for the vast majority of developers, especially those who cant build a development environment with it in mind without putting in a lot of money they'll probably never get back

It answers exactly the question you said Ouya answered. Bedroom coders wanting to distribute games. What investment is this? A PC? All the tools are completely free. Games can and are updated, I've had updates to Indie games. It's not an elegant system but it works. And no, there are no free games on XBLIG, the min price is 80 points ($1 or 64p). If you think the main draw for developers on this system is the ability to give their efforts away for free then you are in cuckoo land.

you're missing one of my main points which is that games are incredibly rarely built from a blank slate anymore, certainly i doubt you will play a single game this year that wasnt using some form of middleware, middleware for consoles costs obscene amount of money. this console allows you to make games using established middleware (unity is the obvious example) at a very low cost

a small team given xna just cannot compete with the same team with unity,the reason middleware such as unity costs such an amount is because it does so many things that takes forever and very specialised software engineers to do

this might be a waste of time but here goes, here's the documentation for all the class functions you can use through script in Unity http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/20_class_hierarchy.html (not mentioning the sheer convenience of a GUI that makes much of it transparent until you want to take direct control, and is in itself endlessly modifiable), now for a platform that is much maligned as being humble, there's almost nothing you cant do in some way using those classes

for XNA?

if UDK or cryengine support android, or will do, there's a landslide there

With what sounds like the potential for easy piracy and the fairly small user base (unless it really takes off), I can't imagine any developer who wants to make any money bothering with the Ouya.

OPEN DOES NOT MEAN EASY TO PIRATE ON WUT!

The 3 most significant middleware platforms available to the general public can produce iOs output i think (UDK, Unity and Cryengine) and there's a few 2D options like Cocos2D too

LazyGunn wrote:

The 3 most significant middleware platforms available to the general public can produce iOs output i think (UDK, Unity and Cryengine) and there's a few 2D options like Cocos2D too

That's what I said. Loads of middleware.

Yeah I was trying to be funny because you'd proved me wrong. 

Never again.

It was touch and go until the bam.

Sorry. Phone doesn't like the input box. Try I trying to say xna is harhardeharharder than uniunity

I'm not as clued up about the process of development as LazyGunn so can't comment on specifics, but it is all about the ease in which people can develop decent games. We're mainly talking time and money here. Ideally, we want to be at a point where people can make reasonable quality games as quickly and cheaply as possible. XNA and Unity were both steps in the right direction. This might be too!

The way I'm looking at it is comparing it to how increased availability and functionality of technology and software had a massive impact on electronic music. Suddenly, anyone could be a producer whereas before you'd have had to have had access to a recording studio and thousands of pounds worth of equipment. Most good electronic music you hear now was probably made by people who started out making tunes in their bedrooms, something they wouldn't have been able to do 20 years ago.