Ouya Dev Consoles Ship, SDK Released 169
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year, the Android-based Ouya game console project raised over nine times as much funding as they initially asked for in their Kickstarter campaign. Now, Ouya developer consoles are starting to ship, and folks on the Ouya team released a video showing what the developers should expect. As explained in the video, the console currently being shipped is by no means the final hardware, but promises to give developers everything they need to start developing apps and games for Ouya. The only surprise is that they decided to add a micro-USB port to the hardware, making it easy to hook up to a PC. The Ouya team has also released an SDK for the device (which they call the ODK — Ouya Development Kit), and have provided most of the source under the Apache 2.0 license. They wrote, 'We think we’ve got a great team of developers here at OUYA, but there’s strength in numbers and a wealth of passionate, talented people out there. We want you, the developers of the world, to work alongside us to continually improve our platform. It’s our hope that releasing a more open ODK will help foster such innovation.'"
This product is a game changer. (Score:1, Interesting)
Traditional game consoles will not be able to keep up with the pace of innovation now that a Kickstarter project can come along and do this.
Sony and Microsoft are going to have their work cut out for them. If their console is not significantly more powerful than the average PC then Google or any third party company can come along and take their asses to the bank. The linux, steam and android combination really is a game changer and with truly state of the art hardware they could get the hardcore gamers this way.
If a console were released for $1000 but it had massive graphics and computer power I would seriously consider buying it over the traditional $300 console. I think the reason people would be willing to pay is people now want gaming super computers and not just consoles. The first company to offer a true gaming supercomputer will get my money. They say graphics don't matter but obviously they do if people are always trying to buy the latest PC and latest graphics card.
What someone needs to do is create a console which somehow links up multiple graphics cards for under $1000. Call it a gaming supercomputer, and target hardcore gamers via Kickstarter. See how much funds can be raised. See if a custom chip can be designed for the project if enough funds can be raised to be used along side the Nvidia GeForce GTX 590. Allow for upgrading the card or cards and you have it.