Ouya $99 Android gaming blowing up on Kickstarter

Sexy Beast

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Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/ouya-99-android-gaming-blowing-kickstarter/

Today a brand new gaming console was announced via Kickstarter called Ouya. Taking the world a bit by surprise, the $99 console has garnered large scale support and is now earning cash at the incredible clip of over $100,000 per hour.

Announced earlier today the console has big aims: to change the face of console game development. The three big console makers: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all enforce strict limits on what can be released on their platform. They have a say in what, when, and how much games can cost. Furthermore, even getting an audience with one of the big three can be time consuming, difficult, and expensive. Ouya wants to take that away, and allow independent developers to frolick freely.

Presumeably, their model will function somewhat similarly to the iPhone with only loose restrictions on what can be released based on a set of values (in the iPhone's case that basically means anything goes besides porn and copyright infringement.) The console will be based on the Android operating system, and as such they are already showing a number of games like Shadowgun which already run on that OS.

Right now, the Kickstarter campaign stands at just under $300,000 (and rising very rapidly) of their goal of $950,000.

Kickstarter: [ame]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console[/ame]
 
Honestly, it looks promising. I'm a fan of the Android OS, and just it's price for what it does is great.
 
At first I was like: "Oh, another new console from someone I've never heard of. Why should I care?"

Then I actually read their intentions. If they stay true to their word, this (paired with Steam Greenlight) will break the monopolistic iron fist that the Big Three have on the video gaming market right now, not only opening the floodgate to indy developers to actually push their products and be heard, but to be SEEN, too. This means you'll see more 'out there' games getting pushed onto Ouya, but it'll also open the console market to a lot of F2P games that might've otherwise been anchored to PC, as well as high-quality titles that aren't just Angry Birds or what have you.

It'll also threaten the top corporations in gaming to stop releasing samey, monotonous piles of crap if they see an individual party distributing more interesting titles than Cry of Doody 31: Mega Derp 6 and going "Nope" in the faces of EA, Activision, etc.

I am interested in seeing where this will go and I have high hopes for it. If I have some cash next month, I'm thinking I'll spare some to the cause.
 
In all honesty, I think it will be a fad. I doubt it can play very many games, let alone minecraft. But the open console idea is great.
 
i don't know about this.

dont get me wrong its badass.

but there's a reason its only 100 dollars....
 
In all honesty, I think it will be a fad. I doubt it can play very many games, let alone minecraft. But the open console idea is great.

It's not designed for AAA gaming, no one is going to be porting the latest or greatest. The Nvidia Tegra 3 isn't exactly the most powerful CPU/GPU out there. What this console is here to do is to hopefully create an environment for innovations in console gaming. Also, please remember that that Epic got Unreal 3 up and running on the IPhone...which is less powerful than this...so anything is possible.

My only gripe on specs, is that I wish they would wait on the Tegra Wayne build, which is 64-bit and has PhysX support.
 
My only concern is that giving anyone and everyone license to release on a platform is a good way to end up with all sorts of terrible games bogging down the good ideas. That said, the internet is about 99.99999% terrible stuff and the top .00001% still finds a way to get out there. I'm cautiously optimistic.
 
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