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by thechut 5052 days ago
You make it sound like developers need to develop specifically for OUYA, many Android games can be very easily ported to the OUYA platform. By using Android OUYA is also tapping the giant pool of existing Android and Java software engineering talent. They are attempting to bridge the gap between smart phone games and console games.

No, its probably not the future of set top entertainment but for $99 I would take an OUYA over an Apple TV, Roku, whatever else any day of the week. Just because it isn't revolutionary doesn't mean it won't be cool/useful/successful.

2 comments

> You make it sound like developers need to develop specifically for OUYA, many Android games can be very easily ported to the OUYA platform.

This has been soundly disproven by anyone who's used XNA to try to port between the 360 and WP7. Most non-trivial games need to be significantly re-thought to be comfortable on both touch and controller-based systems. The interfaces are so hilariously divergent that, no, it's not a simple port at all.

At least, if you care about good games. (Many XBLIG developers don't either. That's a ghetto too, like I expect OUYA to be.)

It's not just porting, but re-designing for gamepads, TV size and viewing distance, longer gaming sessions, etc.. Mobile touchscreen games are not going to translate without changes to gameplay and control schemes.

The best candidates for OUYA are games that have on-screen buttons (yuck!) and wireless gamepad support (who does that on a phone/tablet anyway?!). They will probably be easy. But who wants to play Fruit Ninja with a joystick? Or sit in front of their TV hitting only one button to play Jetpack Joyride?