I’ve been hearing about this kickstarter project for an independent console and it certainly sounds interesting:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouy … me-console
Considering this project’s pretty much guaranteed fully funded, anyone have any thoughts on this? Does this have a chance at being even a cult success or is this probably going to bomb harder than the Phillips CDi?
I am highly skeptical of this thing’s prospects. In the console business software is everything, and I’m not sure I see enough software getting made for this thing to make it anything more than a toy or gimmick.
Developers will publish on anything that makes money. They have no real loyalty for a console or operating system. So long as customers pay real money, they’re gonna do it… but the moment it looks like a road to bankruptcy, they’re gonna ditch.
The lack of a license gatekeeper means more profits to developers… you’d be surprised what percentage of profit goes straight to Nintendo/Sony/MS without them doing a damn thing in making a game.
I’m sure Google will be a backer - if they aren’t already - because it’s Android and they want it to be more common for their world domination plans. 
Looks like the Ouya may have a shot with Square Enix jumping on board:
Well, I want it to succeed, just due to the fact that if it does, It will force the big 3 (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony) to hopefully adjust their licensing deals to make it better and cheaper for developers as a whole to develop games and hopefully make it cheaper for us as well in decreased prices for games.(Doubt it but you never know)
-Since the Ouya is moddable, it would be great if Square Enix put either of their MMOs on it. Just might have to put an HD on it and a keyboard (which you should be able to) and anyway, if it bombs I’m pretty sure I can convert it into a linux box.
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Ouya doesn’t make money. Recent Kickstarter money matching program had con-artists everywhere. People only use Ouya to emulate Big 3 stuff. Fail on fail and fail it seems.
Looks like it does take gatekeeping and billion dollar corporate backing to make a successful console system.
Which is what I was afraid was probably going to happen way back when it was originally announced.
As I see it, there are two main functions of game consoles nowadays. One, a massive bulwark against piracy. Two, the practice of taking a cut of game sales effectively acts as a huge hardware subsidy. That means more powerful machines can hit that sweet spot of $3-400 that really make a console viable. More expensive console, fewer hardware units sold, less games sold, not sustainable. Less powerful but cheap console, games not as desirable, same thing.
Ouya hasn’t got either one.
In addition to everything stated above, which I agree with, I just think Android is a shit OS for game dev.
They gain very little from it (maybe some ease in porting smartphone games, fine) and every dev has to deal with Android, making OS API calls through JNI and all sorts of other garbage like that. The advantages Android provides make a lot of sense in the smartphone space (where you are dealing with any range of device capabilities, screen sizes and many other things) and they make some sense in other areas too, like set top boxes and the like, but for a dedicated indie gaming platform?
‘Free the games’ (the kickstarter matcher campaign) was also managed with a staggering level of incompetence and I think the (at least, original) premise behind it was kind of weird. Free the games by locking them into one platform nobody has? Yeah, that’s freeing them alright. Besides, can you really see a legitimate Ouya exclusive game managing to raise the amount of money they were requiring originally? There just aren’t enough Ouya owners - you’d need a pretty good portion of the entire customer base to fund your game just to make the minimum! Other people aren’t going to fund a project that they can first play six months after the Ouya version release.
Now, admittedly they’ve relaxed some of these requirements, but the premise is still kind of broken. They’d do better to just take the money and directly fund promising looking Kickstarter projects targeting Ouya rather than this kind of fraud bait.