Gaming Meet Ouya: The $99 game [console] everyone is talking about

[iPeez]

They are charging you 99 bucks for what is essentially a phone that is designed for a TV. They are putting some restrictions on the Apps that are being developed for it and creating a dev kit. All good kind of stuff but nothing that is going to change the landscape of the consoles but might make some decent money bringing phone tech to people who might like to play games off of a battery.

Well that cleared things up.

 

[tom_mai78101]

They are charging you 99 bucks for what is essentially a phone that is designed for a TV. They are putting some restrictions on the Apps that are being developed for it and creating a dev kit. All good kind of stuff but nothing that is going to change the landscape of the consoles but might make some decent money bringing phone tech to people who might like to play games off of a battery.

In short, I could pretend Ouya is a mobile, tiny Wii U console with Android as its main OS.

 

[KaerfNomekop]

In short, I could pretend Ouya is a mobile, tiny Wii U console with Android as its main OS.

Isn't it?

 

[tom_mai78101]

Isn't it?

Maybe.

 

[Varine]

For the record there's already a better platform for indie developers. It's called a computer.

 

[tom_mai78101]

For the record there's already a better platform for indie developers. It's called a computer.

Yeah, but whatever you do on the computer, it gets monitored. If you're doing stuffs on Ouya, you probably won't get monitored.

 

[Varine]

Uhhh... I am failing to understand the meaning of this. Explain yourself.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Uhhh... I am failing to understand the meaning of this. Explain yourself.

I'm just saying that if Ouya is out, it may or may not be tracked by other prominent groups. The one thing that comes to mind in Ouya is that, it's possible that malicious developers can create a game, a highly sophisticated creation with the hidden ability to open backdoors, and allowing the console to be tracked down, if Ouya is connected to the Internet by any means.

Some may think that consoles are for the sole purpose of entertaining, some innovative individuals may think that consoles probably have other uses, such as the OtherOS in Sony PS3, 1st generation.

I like to think of the new mobile console as a portable entertainment/computing hub. Not only it entertains you, but it may also be sending out signals in a game, that allows hackers to tinker the data and give you a bad day if you're not that ignorant.

 

[Varine]

What you just described is basically possible in a PC. You think if other OS's become prominent people won't start writing viruses for them too? And why would you be worried about Malware when you're playing a video game?

 

[tom_mai78101]

Some people wanted to incorperate the BitTorrent technology onto any devices they can get a grasp on. Some people wanted to know who's playing what, how frequent they are playing, etc. Some people wanted to add something else (probably in breach of the gray area of the Ouya contract) onto consoles, while the game itself is free. You never know what they would do while you're playing video games.

 

[Varine]

Still... not getting it.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Still... not getting it.

A hacker wants to do malicious things with the help of utilizing Ouya and its benefits.

 

[Varine]

So your point is the only people who would benefit are hackers?

 

[tom_mai78101]

So your point is the only people who would benefit are hackers?

Nope, rather, the hackers, if they are truly evil, will utilize whatever benefits Ouya provided to fulfill their malicious needs. The word "its" is meant to be a pronoun for "Ouya."

 

[Fatmankev]

They are charging you 99 bucks for what is essentially a phone that is designed for a TV. They are putting some restrictions on the Apps that are being developed for it and creating a dev kit. All good kind of stuff but nothing that is going to change the landscape of the consoles but might make some decent money bringing phone tech to people who might like to play games off of a battery.

Benefits, though:
Smart phones cost (and this is just a guess, so don't kill me for it) about 3x as much.
You get to use a TV screen instead of a tiny phone screen.
[edit:]No cost to add developed games to the platform.
There will also be games by 'major game developers' (according to their video) where you'll have access to at least a free demo of the game for you to try before you buy.
You also have an actual controller to play with, as opposed to a touch screen or crappy phone keys or whatever.
Plus, what you already added about playing without a battery.

Problems:
Not as portable as a smart phone
I'd say at least 95% of the games on there will be on the computer and android, too.
You can't make phone calls with it.
Restrictions? (I actually didn't come across these, I'd like to know more about it if you could provide a link, please)
No touch screen to work with, erasing a huge function from the smart phones

But you're right, it probly won't be as big as I want it to be, but the free-to-play model of gaming should see a huge boost and hopefully change the way people approach the profit-end of business when developing future games.

 

[Varine]

Game dev isn't that cheap if you're remotely serious about it. And most major game developers release demos anyway.

 

[Fatmankev]

Game dev isn't that cheap if you're remotely serious about it. And most major game developers release demos anyway.

Completely true on the first point, must not have been thinking when I added that. Definitely true on the second point, too, but I feel like there will be a lot more free-to-play games with additional content that you can purchase. It sounds kind of bad like that, but there are many that offer full access to everything whether you pay or not, it just requires far more dedication to the game and hours spent playing if there's no purchase made.

I dunno, you don't like the idea of it? Think it's pointless?

 

[Varine]

The thing about micro-transactions is that they're expensive to start off with and most indie devs don't have the revenue to do it. I mean a lot of these teams are going months without working a paying job; at one point before my first team fell apart I was the only one working full time supporting two other people, we didn't have a lot of money to take chances with is the thing. Admittedly some teams aren't there with the primary intention to make money, that's obvious especially in some of the larger mods for games like the TES series. But then again, a lot of mods like that have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people contributing a few minor things and a small and dedicated team that does most of the work fitting it together.

Like AED right now has 7000 into two copies of 3DS Max, like 1500 or so in plugins, 500 for Visual Studio, like 700 for Photoshop, 700 for Flash, 400 for Dreamweaver, and another few thousand in other things that we use. Altogether we're in a good 15 or 20 grand. Not to mention that I expect to be spending another ten grand on advertising at least, I'll have five or six thousand in setting up for distribution (printing packages, disks, etc. Then setting up accounts for DD). Plus one lawsuit and some lawyer fees for my contracts that I make people sign now and advisement during the little legal kerfuffle. I'll also have to have a lot of things outsourced, like many companies do. I'm not equipped for things like music and a lot of sound effects, even a lot of models will be outsourced and that, if it's being made custom by someone that you hired, can easily cost a few thousand each for things like high-res characters. Plus textures, rig, and animation. So with all that in mind, I need to make my money back. Doing microtransactions will work eventually, but personally I don't really see the need to buy most things in those kinds of games. In fact, not a lot of people actually do. You're looking at fairly small amounts of money here and there, in a typical basis, over the course of months or years. It adds up, but not quickly. Whereas selling my game at forty dollars a copy like intended, I only need to sell a thousand to break even, instead of hundreds of thousands of transactions. Plus this won't run my game. So I'm not saying it's 'useless', it's just not an ideal platform for more serious developers that looking to design AA or AAA level games, but rather for hobbyists who might take advantage of the fact that there's less clutter on Ouya than there is on PC, which means more chance of people playing their games.

And just as a little fun fact, I think Microsoft loses somewhere around 125 dollars per Xbox 360 they sell (which is to say, it costs more for them to build it than they sell it for). I believe Sony and Nintendo do as well but I don't know what the actual figure is. That's why consoles have started to dominate gaming, and that's the only real reason why: it's cheaper to buy an Xbox to play your graphic and CPU intensive games than it is to buy a computer that can usually.

 

[The Helper]

Hall of Fame! These were cool little devices that just did not make it. There is still a community for it though.