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The Good And Bad Of The Ouya System

Learn whether or not your Ouya purchase will be worthwhile directly from those who know the system best: game developers.

Ouya development kits started shipping to developers about a month ago, and now that these programmers have had a bit of time to play around with the system, what do they think? Good question. We're not the only one who's asked.

Engadget posed this to a group of game developer, and here's what they said about the Kickstarter funded console.

"The OUYA is definitely an exciting piece of hardware as it's positively silly how quickly you can get something running on it," said Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Games, creators of 2D gems Shoot1UP and Explosionade. "This may be obvious for all Android mobile developers, but coming from a console background, I was really impressed with the accessibility and open aspects of the platform. In fact, the openness of the OUYA is definitely one of its strongest traits. From its ease of development, to how open the marketplace is supposed to be, I think it's a real delight. Getting Serious Sam Double D XXL through XBLA's Certification was brutal! I'm happy to release the game there, but it's a nice break to have fewer restrictions."

While most of the developers have good things to say about the system, many of them have some reservations as well.

Jerrod Putman from Tiny Tim Games, creators of Sheepstacker and Word Monkey said, "The disadvantage of the hardware is the passage of time. The Tegra 3 chipset inside is powerful enough to push a lot of polys around and it can even handle a fair amount of pixel shaders, but there are already mobile chipsets being introduced that will surpass it easily. But this is just par for the course for consoles, and over time developers should be able to push the boundaries of what the chip is able to do."

There you have it. Some good. Some bad. But only time will tell if the good outweighs the bad and the Ouya proves successful.

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Comments
  • I am contemplating about getting it, but after release to see how it does first. What I am seeing from it now makes it seem like a good buy, since the price is great and the potential.
  • If I want to play android games I'd rather play them on my android smart phone that I can take anywhere and already have. The capabilities of this system are better than a phone but not powerful enough for me to really feel like it's a console. While good games will inevitably show up on the system, I don't think there will be anything of high enough quality to be system selling. Soon enough android phones will be powerful enough to play games developed for this and because the games were made for android it would be relatively easy to port them over (the main issue would be re-adapting the controls).
  • I wonder how this will influence Ouya sales.
  • I like that the Ouya is getting some love, and hope that maybe some smaller devs might think about putting games on their first. I can see this being a training ground of sorts for indie devs, after figuring out some things about how getting a game out there works they can try their hand at something more ambitious. I may buy one if it gets some good apps and devs make a whole bunch of classic turn based RPG's.
  • This whole thing just seems kinda silly to me.
  • People will still buy it. I think they mostly need to work on their marketing to get it out there. Also, Ive seen the UI, and it needs work.

  • I completely forgot about this running a Tegra 3 when Nvidia announced the Tegra 4 - didn't even remember until now.

  • So basically, Mobile phones are to the Ouya as PC's are to the Consoles.

    Sounds a bit. . . disappointing; but we'll see.

  • I'm not all that interested, but for the price point and the accessibility, it could be a big hit. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

  • Ouya system v.s the ps4 system who will be top dog
  • Whatever gets more people gaming.

  • http://youtu.be/psCoR4zmIpE

    http://youtu.be/crE8v3LWO4I

    so these are videos on the Ouya... cool i guess. it reminds me of those old TV gaming devices (i had a spongebob one when i was a kid :) ) Hope they sale well... then again they support hackers :/?
  • I don't know about this. I'm going to hold off on buying one for a while and see if it gets a fair amount of good titles. It certainly seems like an interesting concept, but that means nothing if there aren't any good games on it.
  • I see.

  • Well as far as hardware problems, the Ouyas creators have to problem with people opening it up while keeping their warranty...so I'm sure putting in a new chip is probably something fairly simple, like a new graphics card on a pc
  • I suppose overall though, none of us have an idea until a good year after its release on how well it'll do

  • I don't think I'll be picking it up, but it certainly seems like an interesting piece of hardware. I'm still very skeptical.

  • I'm never going to be convinced that I should drop $100+ on yet another console when I could be putting it towards one of three non-Android consoles, no matter how appealing the concept.
  • It's all about the titles. The console isn't overly expensive, so if the Ouya can score some great exclusives,I might break down and get one.

  • All I read was bad news to me. I like that Microsoft makes it difficult to get games on Xbox Live, only good games get through.
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