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by barranger 5057 days ago
Ouya adds a couple of other requirements to the "will work with Ouya":

1) Controller Support 2) Must have at least a free demo, if not another free component.

Also it looks like they won't be having the Play Store, meaning that for many (most?) Android title won't work with Ouya.

2 comments

The Android UI toolkit actually already handles controllers relatively well thanks to the use of trackballs and D-pads on first and second generation Android hardware as well as Google TV; non-game apps such as TuneIn and XBMC[0] shouldn't have many issues adapting, if any. (2) is a business model issue, not a technical one.

[0] XBMC is mostly custom, but happens it hails from a controller-based platform to begin with.

Well, pedantically speaking, providing a free app is also a technical issue and not only a business one. Many of the paid apps have no in-app payment set up at all. For the OUYA, you'd need to implement that. Which is easy, but there's still some engineering and design time to invest to adapt (some) apps to the OUYA.

Tho, as an IAP advocate myself, I'd argue that every game dev in their right mind should have that already by now. And I applaud OUYA for "forcing" developers to do the smart thing. But unfortunately, some will still need to adapt.

But you're right, I'm just pointing a detail.

You don't need play store to get apps to run on Android devices. I know some apps from the Amazon app store won't run without the "Amazon app store" app installed but I've never seen a program depend on Play the same way.