5 ms·

Yeah nah it's going to bomb. Ouya 2.0 but with a nostalgic brand attached. To actually sell in any worthwile amount a console NEEDS to have a proper developer s

by krige 9y ago

Yeah nah it's going to bomb. Ouya 2.0 but with a nostalgic brand attached. To actually sell in any worthwile amount a console NEEDS to have a proper developer support. And I mean BIG developer, not a bunch of indie studios porting their preexisting products to linux.

mmjaa 9y ago
Following the world of individual developers for years, I would have to disagree with you. If they can cover the basic users, i.e. get it shipping at profit, there's definitely a way to make this product work. Just look at the GP2X, GPH, GPD Pocket, Pyra Handheld, Open Pandora, Caanoo handhelds, for example .. the users are there.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Not paying users you mean, mostly using the consoles to run some variation of MAME. This is why major studios mostly ignore GNU/Linux gamers, as many feel entitled to have nice stuff for free.
boondaburrah 9y ago
As someone who got caught up in the OUYA craze, nah that's not why it bombed. A console will probably do fine with just indies. What will kill it is a company that continues to not fix problems, act like everything is "rock star awesome" all the time, and pretend like they're some buddy of yours instead of be responsible. OUYA just continued to piss me off by not even bothering to make sure their experience was good and brushing it off by doubling down on marketing on how cool they were. They slapped android on a Tegra and called it "good." At no point did they try to unify the controller api, yet they claimed to support multiple brands/types of controller. It was on the dev to map each one when they can't even predict every brand. I had controllers work in one game but not the next! That's unforgivable. Either handle an SDL2_Gamepad style mapping at the ENV/system level or just say you only support OUYA controllers. When they were getting complaints about overscan (ugh, why do we still need to deal with this (aside: holy crap iPhone X, not you too!)), they elected to just force-scale the UI down by an inch (memories of PS2) and again tell the devs to just deal with overscan themselves on a game-by-game basis. A good solution would have been to make overscan a system setting that the games could query ("oh, btw, your display area is actually 1900x1000, offset by 9px left, 25px down"). This pattern of "slap a fix on it, and then plug your ears and yell 'LALALA'" was what killed it, and probably all other attempts at an indie console for a while. Hopefully the world has forgotten the OUYA enough that this has a chance. I mean OUYA didn't even have a useful recovery partition COME ON.
Latty 9y ago
It depends on what you mean by "console" - this isn't going to be an equivalent to one of the big systems or become a "platform", no, but that doesn't seem to be what they are aiming for. Will people pick them up and use them? I don't see why not. It's an attractive alternative to a steam link or whatever.
mustacheemperor 9y ago
Depends what "it" really is, since information is still pretty scant. If this is really just an underpowered Linux box it'll fail like the Ouya, but there's more opportunity than just running cheapo indie games. 1/3rd of the Steam game library can run on Linux, so if the box is powerful enough to run games like L4D2, and/or can stream content from a real computer/run streaming applications ala the shield it could succeed. The shield can cost $200+ depending on configuration, the market is definitely there.

by krige 9y ago

mmjaa 9y ago

Following the world of individual developers for years, I would have to disagree with you. If they can cover the basic users, i.e. get it shipping at profit, there's definitely a way to make this product work. Just look at the GP2X, GPH, GPD Pocket, Pyra Handheld, Open Pandora, Caanoo handhelds, for example .. the users are there.

pjmlp 9y ago
Not paying users you mean, mostly using the consoles to run some variation of MAME. This is why major studios mostly ignore GNU/Linux gamers, as many feel entitled to have nice stuff for free.

boondaburrah 9y ago

As someone who got caught up in the OUYA craze, nah that's not why it bombed. A console will probably do fine with just indies. What will kill it is a company that continues to not fix problems, act like everything is "rock star awesome" all the time, and pretend like they're some buddy of yours instead of be responsible. OUYA just continued to piss me off by not even bothering to make sure their experience was good and brushing it off by doubling down on marketing on how cool they were. They slapped android on a Tegra and called it "good." At no point did they try to unify the controller api, yet they claimed to support multiple brands/types of controller. It was on the dev to map each one when they can't even predict every brand. I had controllers work in one game but not the next! That's unforgivable. Either handle an SDL2_Gamepad style mapping at the ENV/system level or just say you only support OUYA controllers. When they were getting complaints about overscan (ugh, why do we still need to deal with this (aside: holy crap iPhone X, not you too!)), they elected to just force-scale the UI down by an inch (memories of PS2) and again tell the devs to just deal with overscan themselves on a game-by-game basis. A good solution would have been to make overscan a system setting that the games could query ("oh, btw, your display area is actually 1900x1000, offset by 9px left, 25px down"). This pattern of "slap a fix on it, and then plug your ears and yell 'LALALA'" was what killed it, and probably all other attempts at an indie console for a while. Hopefully the world has forgotten the OUYA enough that this has a chance. I mean OUYA didn't even have a useful recovery partition COME ON.

Latty 9y ago

It depends on what you mean by "console" - this isn't going to be an equivalent to one of the big systems or become a "platform", no, but that doesn't seem to be what they are aiming for. Will people pick them up and use them? I don't see why not. It's an attractive alternative to a steam link or whatever.

mustacheemperor 9y ago

Depends what "it" really is, since information is still pretty scant. If this is really just an underpowered Linux box it'll fail like the Ouya, but there's more opportunity than just running cheapo indie games. 1/3rd of the Steam game library can run on Linux, so if the box is powerful enough to run games like L4D2, and/or can stream content from a real computer/run streaming applications ala the shield it could succeed. The shield can cost $200+ depending on configuration, the market is definitely there.