Google Developing Android Game Console 143
An anonymous reader writes "A report by the Wall Street Journal says Google is working on an Android-based gaming console in addition to the long-rumored smartwatch. 'The hardware plans are the latest sign of Google's determination to build on the success of Android, the software it launched in 2008 that powered 75% of all smartphones and 57% of tablets shipped globally in the first quarter, according to the research firm IDC. ... The people briefed on the matter said Google is reacting in part to expectations that rival Apple will launch a videogame console as part of its next Apple TV product release.' This development push comes as the company is wrapping up work on Android 4.3, and as the Kickstarted, Android-based Ouya console is finding success in retail markets. Google is also reportedly working on a revision to its Nexus Q media streaming device, which the company announced last year and quickly shelved after they realized it was a bit weird and not terribly useful."
Is it called Ouya? (Score:4, Funny)
Because I could swear I just saw one of these in a Best Buy flyer last weekend
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Of course it doesn't use the Play Store. It's not meant as a general-purpose Android platform (and neither would any Google console). It has to have it's own specialized store. You can't very well have a console loading apps that expect a touch screen, accelerometer, etc. Even if Google let their console use the Play Store, they would have to wall it off into it's own area.
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Any modern controller will have a touch screen and an accelerometer.
Far better would simply be a requirement for the game to support controllers. Then people could run those on their phone too provided they had a controller.
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So it's impossible to create a single game that works on both Android phones and Android console?
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Re:Is it called Ouya? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it doesn't use the Play Store. It's not meant as a general-purpose Android platform
it doesn't use the Play Store, but that's not why.
It has to have it's own specialized store.
this begs the question, does it have to have its own specialized store? And the answer, for those who know what they are talking about, is no.
You can't very well have a console loading apps that expect a touch screen, accelerometer, etc.
If Ouya would implement emulation of accelerometer from a joystick, then you certainly could. In fact, you could then use a PS3 Sixaxis controller to play those games, by mapping its accelerometer axes. But, they haven't done this. They should also emulate screen touches from controller presses. There's an app that does this, but it's an obvious thing for an android game console to do out of the box.
Even if Google let their console use the Play Store, they would have to wall it off into it's own area.
Why don't you get some relevant experience before running your suck? The Xperia Play uses the Play Store, and it's a phone from 2011. You just put "optimized for xperia play" (maybe in all caps) into your game description, and it automatically shows up in the list of available Xperia Play software in the special games launcher which appears when you slide out the gamepad. In short, you have no idea what you are talking about, and you are just pulling shit out of your ass and slapping it down on slashdot.
Xperia Play isn't the only way to say controller (Score:2)
does it have to have its own specialized store? And the answer, for those who know what they are talking about, is no.
So if I have a phone or tablet paired to a Bluetooth controller, and I want to use this phone or tablet to search for games that will be compatible with both the phone or tablet and this new "Gooya", how do I set Google Play Store to narrow the selection to only titles that support controller operation?
You just put "optimized for xperia play" (maybe in all caps) into your game description
Which means the developer would have to buy specifically an Xperia Play to test on, in addition to a Moga, a JXD S5110, an Archos GamePad, etc. so that they can all be included in the description. That's why
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So if I have a phone or tablet paired to a Bluetooth controller, and I want to use this phone or tablet to search for games that will be compatible with both the phone or tablet and this new "Gooya", how do I set Google Play Store to narrow the selection to only titles that support controller operation?
The new Google Play store with games support isn't even up yet, and you're asking me questions about how it works? This is a trivial implementation issue, the only question is whether Google will get it right, not whether it is possible. Also, features like checking for hardware features on your device are already in the Play Store.
You just put "optimized for xperia play" (maybe in all caps) into your game description
Which means the developer would have to buy specifically an Xperia Play to test on, in addition to a Moga, a JXD S5110, an Archos GamePad, etc. so that they can all be included in the description. That's why searching based on the names of devices of similar capability is unsustainable.
No it isn't, and no amount of claiming that it is will make it so. The developer can simply not support those platforms if that's what they choose. An Android smartphone develope
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Wrong. "You can't very well have a console loading apps that expect a touch screen, accelerometer, etc." is true, but it does not lead to saying that it requires a specialized store. You've got the premise and conclusion backwards
What's wrong with you? (Score:2)
What's the problem with you guys? Don't you have more than 1 Android device tied to the same Google account (especially an older one, or a tablet)?
The Play Store makes it pretty clear which device(s) on your account will or won't work with the selected software. Just add the console to the list and be done with it.
KISS, man, KISS!
Older tablets without Google Play; narrowing (Score:2)
Don't you have more than 1 Android device tied to the same Google account (especially an older one, or a tablet)?
Tablets didn't start coming with Google Play until Honeycomb. Kindle Fire, Coby Kyros, and older Archos products don't have it, for instance.
The Play Store makes it pretty clear which device(s) on your account will or won't work with the selected software.
But does it allow narrowing the search results to applications compatible with a single device on a given account? If not, the user would have to tap each search result, "no, that isn't compatible", tap another, "no, that isn't compatible either", etc.
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The Play Store makes it pretty clear which device(s) on your account will or won't work with the selected software.
But does it allow narrowing the search results to applications compatible with a single device on a given account?
Just like your other objections in this thread, this is not really a problem. You can immediately tell whether games will operate on your device by browsing the Play Store from the device itself, which is how most users can be expected to behave. It's also a trivial feature to add, and if users ask for it, they probably will.
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Of course it doesn't use the Play Store. It's not meant as a general-purpose Android platform (and neither would any Google console). It has to have it's own specialized store. You can't very well have a console loading apps that expect a touch screen, accelerometer, etc. Even if Google let their console use the Play Store, they would have to wall it off into it's own area.
It's not like we really need to speculate, they already have had television-optimized Android devices accessing the Play store officially for over a year and a half in the form of Google TV. This works fine because the Play store allows developers to filter device availability based on hardware capabilities. Android apps are assumed to require a touchscreen unless explicitly declared otherwise, so by default an app will not show up on GTV or presumably any future console. If the application's manifest is
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This is why Slashdot needs editing, I forgot to link the GTV app visibility guidelines.
https://developers.google.com/tv/android/docs/gtv_market_filtering [google.com]
I would imagine these will carry through mostly unchanged to any console.
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You can't very well have a console loading apps that expect a touch screen, accelerometer, etc.
Android phones technically do not require touchscreens. This was a decision made from the very beginning of Android for accessibility reasons. In China, there are even some super cheap gingerbread Android phones with no touchscreen, but only an hardware keyboard and a D-pad. This decision also made it easier for testing on PC emulators (where most developers still don't have touchscreens on there yet, unless they actually hook up an actual device).
Even if Google let their console use the Play Store, they would have to wall it off into it's own area.
Google Play doesn't wall off, it filters. The Android OS is
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You don't wall it off, you just mark the appropriate apps "compatible with"
Well, I think that's a semantic difference, since either way you're separating console games out from general apps. But the point is that the Ouya has no reason to support the Play Store at this time, since it's incompatible with most of the apps there.
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It's only an issue if they're really incompatible. If your console looks like the Wii U controller, I don't see why anything would have to be incompatible. (Same AC as GP.)
Instead of speculating wildly, you could visit the pages on the Ouya SDK, and then you would know that they've created their own custom mechanisms for talking to controllers. This makes Ouya games incompatible with Android in general, and vice versa. Only games which allow remapping controls to arbitrary input events (pet peeve: this should be all games, but it sure isn't) or games written specifically to support Ouya (which is not complicated, I am not much of a programmer and even I understood the example
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they've created their own custom mechanisms for talking to controllers.
I've often wondered about this. A couple years ago, I got in on the first round for the iControlPad. [icontrolpad.com] The device was great in some aspects, and disappointing in many others. In particular, the d-pad is just awful. I blame Nintendo.
Anyway, one of the things I thought was odd was that it isn't, out of the box, a standard bluetooth game pad. It uses bluetooth's serial port profile and communicates that way. It supports showing up as a game pad, a keyboard, and a few other things, but this did puzzle me
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I'd guess the reason was flaky or absent support for HID-class gamepads on one or more platforms they wanted to support. It's a lot easier to make a serial driver than a USB driver, so if the USB HID support is busted anyway, I'd go the same route.
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Re:Is it called Ouya? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the Ouya doesn't use the Play store
Hasn't hurt the Kindle Fire.
Re:Is it called Ouya? (Score:4, Insightful)
It has prevented me and several other folks from buying them. Might not have hurt it much, but surely there are some lost sales.
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The point of the Kindle line is to make people buy stuff from Amazon. Any sale to someone who won't do that that they avoid is not a "hurt", as they are likely still selling at a loss. Razor & blades model.
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I doubt they are selling the Kindle line at a loss, given the pricing is comparable to similar devices from other mfg's.
When the Kindle Fire was released various analysts looked at the components, did the math, and determined that it was basically being sold at cost. The various google nexus products also seem to be sold at cost. It seems that neither Amazon nor Google look at their devices as profit centers. Their pricing also puts incredible pricing pressure on other tablet vendors.
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It's more of a push; the bigger question is how much the Kindle Fire hurts the Play Store.
OUYA also requires free to play component ... (Score:2)
Unfortunately the Ouya doesn't use the Play store ...
It is not unfortunate. It allow OUYA to have their own store that requires that *all* games have a free to play component. You can therefore try out *every* game on OUYA before updating it to the full game with in-app purchases. This greatly reduces buyer remorse.
More options (Score:3, Interesting)
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Looks like 2014 is shaping up to be the Year of the Consoles. LOTS of consoles.
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Problem was cames not Compatible consoles (Score:2)
Hopefully not like 1983 [wikipedia.org].
The crash was mainly due to the lack of quality games and lots of poor ones, Android/Valve/Apple already have an abundance of successful games already, and all are in control of their shops..so can enforce any kind of quality control.
Re:Problem was cames not Compatible consoles (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, speaking from my own experience, I can tell you that a lot of gamers at that time had simply abandoned their consoles for Commodore 64's. You could even use the same joystick (beat the hell out of that sorry-ass 5200 controller). Atari had counted on 2600 fans to move on to the 5200. But for the same price, you could just buy a Commodore. And games were a helluva lot cheaper on the Commodore, since it was so easy to pirate them.
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But for the same price [as an Atari 5200 console], you could just buy a Commodore.
Including the 1541 disk drive? And how long did it take for games to load on a C64 compared to the second- and third-generation consoles?
C64 Cartridges ... (Score:2)
But for the same price [as an Atari 5200 console], you could just buy a Commodore.
Including the 1541 disk drive? And how long did it take for games to load on a C64 compared to the second- and third-generation consoles?
The C64 had a cartridge port.
... it took a trivial, inconsequential amount of time for games that were cartridge sized. Plus it allowed games that were much larger than an 8K cartridge could allow.
Regarding loading games from a floppy disk
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The C64 had a cartridge port.
Yes, that none of the great C64 games were on.
Regarding loading games from a floppy disk ... it took a trivial, inconsequential amount of time for games that were cartridge sized.
yes, but most floppy games were NOT cartridge sized. and the wait wasn't trivial. 2 minutes and 47 seconds for Flight Simulator II! God knows how long for some of those strategy games or Gold Box RPG's.
One of the reasons the NES stomped the C64 was better graphics and NO load times.
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But for the same price [as an Atari 5200 console], you could just buy a Commodore.
Including the 1541 disk drive? And how long did it take for games to load on a C64 compared to the second- and third-generation consoles?
And yet that didn't stop the sale of C64's.
No loading on NES (Score:2)
And yet that didn't stop the sale of C64's.
CronoCloud explained before [slashdot.org] how the NES and its complete lack of loading time stopped the sale of C64s.
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Actually, speaking from my own experience, I can tell you that a lot of gamers at that time had simply abandoned their consoles for Commodore 64's.
The more affluent upper middle class kids, perhaps. in 1983 the C64 alone with no printer, monitor or 1541 cost the equivalent of $1400.
People without that kind of money, had to stick with what they had till the NES came out. There's a reason you could still buy new 2600 games in 1987
And games were a helluva lot cheaper on the Commodore, since it was so easy to pirate them.
Which led companies to stop developing them for or porting them to the Commodore platforms and sticking with DOS...since they had more money (obviously) and were willing to actually pay money for games compared to the 2600 ow
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How does web browsing and installing programs make a computer slow or unstable?
I don't use windows, but is this still the reality windows users face?
Script in minimized tabs; daemons (Score:2)
How does web browsing and installing programs make a computer slow or unstable?
Pages open in a minimized web browser keep running script functions triggered by window.setInterval(). Installed programs want to keep their own update notifiers and other daemons (Winamp Agent, Apple Mobile Device Service, Java Quick Starter, etc.) running in the background.
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You could close the web browser.
Still not having a centralized update system is a pretty big failing of windows. I am not suggesting a store, but a repository system like that used in linux where I can add the chrome repo instead of having some stupid updater.
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Again way more complicated and not as good as what I am suggesting. Still better than what they currently use though.
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So the Ouya is out, and Apple, Google, and Valve are all working on consoles. I'll be interested in seeing how they develop, but the more competition for Microsoft/Sony, the better for the consumer.
Except of course when the game you want is on a different console to the one you own. Dedicated console gamers have bought all three consoles in the past for this reason. Will they fee they have to buy even more now?
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The best part is the Ouya can work as a thin client for your Steam box. nVidia supports this natively via their Shield device [nvidia.com] and a gtx 650 or higher video card (those video cards have a built in x264 encoder), it's rumored that this functionality will be extended to Tegra 3 devices (which would include the Ouya).
For older video cards (and until nVidia expands the capability), there's Kainy [google.com]. Which will allow you to do the same.
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Android Domination (Score:2)
This year actually (Score:2)
By 2020, all operating systems will be Android.
Its set to become the dominant Operating system this year. PC's currently have about 1.2 Billion Machines. The last measure I have seen was 750 million devices activated in total and 1.5 million activations and that was Q32012
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Android is the Windows of the mobile world. The default OS for people that don't know any better.
a bit random? (Score:2)
Re:a bit random? (Score:4, Funny)
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You're only realizing this now??? This is has been Google's M.O. almost since day one!
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This is pretty much the MO of all successful businesses.
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When you're sitting on a pile of cash bigger than Kilimanjaro, then you can afford it.
Is that why their home is called "Mountain View"?
Re: a bit random? (Score:3)
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Companies are driven by profits
No, this is a very fundemental, yet very common misunderstanding.
Companies are like Soylent Green: they're made of people. As such they are driven by the whims and desires of the people in charge. Clearly they have to make a profit to stay around, but beyond the "enough profit to not be going out of business", companies can happily flop and flail round doing whatever the people making up the company actually do from day to day.
In practice, the rutheless drive for profit does n
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That's what happens when you give your employees one day a week to just work on crazy shit. ;-)
Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Evidence (Score:2)
More speculation. When a similar rumor came out about Apple, all the haters here cried about how /. was reporting on imaginary hardware.
Except it wasn't a similar rumour; it just wasn't a console. http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/12/4421534/ios-7-to-include-standardized-game-controller-support [theverge.com] iOS 7 to include standardized game controller support.
This is about the follow up to the never launched Nexus Q a media hub...which nobody really knew what to do with. Suddenly with Sony & Microsoft both pushing their game consoles as media hubs, and well a number of Android gaming consoles have already launched. I personally own two...OUYA and The
apple already has a game console (Score:3, Insightful)
two in fact. they are called the iphone and the ipad. the ipad version has the graphical power of an xbox 360 and some games like real racing take advantage of it.
the Apple TV is a cheapo device to allow you to stream the games to your TV along with some streaming options
Apple is not going to sell a full game console because
1. game consoles have this problem of being locked to a TV. you can't play on the train to work
2. the "real gamer" market is a minority now. there are tens of thousands of iOS games out there. lots of them make more money than the real console games.
3. apple uses the same parts in all products. building a special console means a more powerful chip with a limited manufacturing run. apple is not going to do it
4. a more powerful Apple TV is going to cost more money and sell less units. apple uses flash memory. you can't have a good console with 16GB flash
Those are not game consoles (Score:3, Interesting)
two in fact. they are called the iphone and the ipad.>
I don't disagree with you, you could argue they are full blown computers, TV's...but that would not stop them being relatively tiny compared to a 40" screen with dedicated controllers. I just got my OUYA working...Apple have nothing to compete.
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apple tv is only $99. if you want to play games on the TV you buy an apple tv and use airplay to stream to your TV. some games are even coded to display data on the iphone or ipad and the picture on the TV like the Wii
the whole idea is that for $499 you get a device you can take anywhere and does gaming, internet, books, movies, tv, music, email and other things. instead of a $399 or $499 console that is locked to the TV
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apple tv is only $99. if you want to play games on the TV you buy an apple tv and use airplay to stream to your TV. some games are even coded to display data on the iphone or ipad and the picture on the TV like the Wii
the whole idea is that for $499 you get a device you can take anywhere and does gaming, internet, books, movies, tv, music, email and other things. instead of a $399 or $499 console that is locked to the TV
Isn't that $499 device called a laptop?
Re: Those are not game consoles (Score:3)
If you had to "get it working" then Apple most certainly can compete with that.
Apple incompatable ecosystem (Score:2)
If you had to "get it working" then Apple most certainly can compete with that.
Apple only works with their own proprietary hardware; software; I notice they have launched another incompatible connector this week. That only worked when they were dominant. Now its a foolish strategy, that locks Apple out of new markets, rather than their customers in.
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apple uses flash memory. you can't have a good console with 16GB flash
Note that Ouya has 8GB flash and Nvidia Shield has 16GB flash. And Moore's law would indicate that the next Apple TV release would have 32GB flash.
iPhone and iPad are indeed great mobile device platforms. They've already taken that market from Nintendo and Sony. But they can have all the graphical power of a 360, they don't compete against TV and game-controller based consoles. Apple TV could.
I have no doubt at all that the next Apple TV will be capable of running apps. But maybe Apple won't launch it speci
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I'd say if Apple had the choice of selling a twice-as-powerful AppleTV for the same price, or the same AppleTV for $49, they'd do the latter. Let the games be played on other parts of the network, and let the bridge to the TV simply be a dumb box. That way you minimize the Dread Fragmentation by keeping the phone/pad at the center of the ecosystem.
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There's no technical reason why the Apple TV they are selling now couldn't run apps. All it needs is as SDK for developers and an App Store.
Apps need to be written to work with a TV sized screen and controllers, regardless of whether they actually run on the iPhone or the Apple TV. So whilst it is strictly speaking fragmentation, as it's a different category, rather than just another random variation of a phone, it's not pointless fragmentation.
$99 is already cheap for an Apple Product. Whilst the iPod Shuf
Apple? (Score:3)
For anyone wondering about Apple, most people think it's going to be the Apple TV. Coupled with an iOS 7 update, it will allow wireless controllers.
if its anything like google TV, then eh (Score:2)
Google blew it with google TV imo. It wasn't usable at all, unless you already had cable or directTV and paid for all of the extra services. I realize a game console is very different in that respect. I'm saying I didn't think google put enough effort into making google TV useful. And I'm concerned they will go the same route with a gaming console....
Ouya has been a disappointment, not in the idea, just not enough support for it to be worth it.
These are all just my opinions obviously
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the real joke with google tv is that they spend quite a lot of buck to customize android for it and yet uncustomized android tv boxes work better for the functionality than google tv does. waste of money.
In your opinion. (Score:2)
Google blew it with google TV imo.
http://dx.com/c/consumer-electronics-199/hd-media-players-103/android-hd-players-191 [dx.com] This is one Chinese shop. They currently selling 560 Different googleTV devices ranging in price from $35-$200. Just becasue you wasn't interested does not mean everyone else wasn't...I went for a Raspberry Pi with XBMC, but It was a toss up.
The OUYA is great. I have just unpacked mine, and is of surprisingly high quality. The games are fun and cheap. I wouldn't hesitate in suggesting anyone else own one.
Opinions should be
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None of the devices on the page you listed run Google TV. None of them.
I'm not sure if you are honestly misinformed about what we're talking about or are just cocksure and arrogant to others while being ignorant yourself.
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Those are all Android devices not Google TV devices.
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If they're anything like the Chinese units I see at CES, it's regular Android with a remote that may be a Wii-style motion controller. Those units are much closer to Android's interface than Google TV interface. On-screen keyboards and all.
Cloud? (Score:2)
I read the article and I'm not seeing "cloud" in it. Something must be missing. Everything new and high-performance uses "the cloud".
Beat Apple to market? (Score:2)
lol, android gaming (Score:2)
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Re:We need one that supports emulators. (Score:4, Informative)
Ouya already has a bunch of emulators. BYOR, though.
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Ouya already has a bunch of emulators. BYOR, though.
Like Roms are hard to get. I can think of at least 5 different sites that have them for free.
Virtual Console (Score:2)
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Houston, he doesn't read the news!.
News Flash: The Ouya now has several emulators for all your emulating needs. Everything from Mame, PS1, N64 and even those old x86 DOS Games!. So plug in that USB Drive and let's light this fire!.
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The vast majority of PS and Xbox games are crap, lots of shovelware. So long as the best games can be found from the crap, it works fine.
Android games now are pretty much casual because of the devices they are played on. Once you have a proper console there is no reason more involved games can't be brought over.
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In 1983 finding the good games vs crap was a lot harder than today.
In 1983 it was a lot harder to make a good console.
Online reviews (Score:2)
Now, Ouya's "must have a demo" policy may mitigate this, but it doesn't mean the risk is gone. It could become a case of "thousands of TV channels but nothing good is on"
There wasn't really a gaming press back then. Nowadays, good video games are far more likely to get good reviews on the Web, and there are review aggregators.
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Low Horsepower...Maybe (Score:2)
A quick look at released Android Console 1.7Ghz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 with GB RAM 8Gb internal Memory and Nvidia Tegra 3. That is not a bad specification.It definitely puts it in this generation of consoles. If Google do come out with a console we are expecting a generation on from this again.
Android also has a massive advantage over the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo in that the hardware can be updated *every year*, which suits me.
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Android also has a massive advantage over the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo in that the hardware can be updated *every year*
Not if the big name developers drop last year's console the way they dropped Xbox when the 360 came out or dropped GameCube when the Wii came out.
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