9 ms·
Final Fantasy comes to Ouya
- funkiee 14y agoI'm not exactly sure what they're saying here other than "Android games can run on our Android console".
- mmahemoff 14y agoAn official partnership means they'll probably work together to make it go beyond "it works" to make it a great experience that brings out the best of Ouya platform, e.g. make use of hatever social features, game controller tweaks, settings are available to make it a proper showcase.
- KaoruAoiShiho 14y agoThey're saying "We got social proof from an A-lister"
- debacle 14y agoFF3 is going to be coming to Android, Ouya or no.
- eclipxe 14y agoIt's already there on Android... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_enix.android_googleplay.FFIII_GP&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5zcXVhcmVfZW5peC5hbmRyb2lkX2dvb2dsZXBsYXkuRkZJSUlfR1AiXQ. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_eni....
- pflats 14y agoI'm guessing it'll be tweaked to support a controller? And it's a big-name "Launch Title". Gives some cred.
- moystard 14y agoSame here, they are getting money for a game that has been released already and that many of us play every day... Sometimes I wonder if people think before funding a project on Kickstarter, it is getting ridiculous.
- mtgx 14y agoWhat has a game being available on a platform ever stopped the publishers from charging for it on another platform?
- scribblemacher 14y agoThe console doesn't exist yet and SquareEnix already is already making FF-remakes for it! I'm happy to see a big name in the gaming business offering some support, but I'm more excited to see some original, thinking-out-of-the-box homebrew games. I want to play the next Cave Story; I've already played FF3 like a bazillion times.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoSquaresoft already has it running on Android (and Tegra 3, like in the Ouya), so I doubt it requires much effort on their part. Having Sq's name on board will definitely help PR on both sides though, making homebrew titles more likely.
- ajross 14y agoFFIII was an NES game. One presumes the "remake" is just running the original ROM in an emulator. So the "development work" involved is essentially just getting a license written up and signed. Maybe they'll update some copyrights and artwork, too.
- cdr 14y agoNope. It was done as a pretty thorough remake for the DS a few years ago - added 3D, changes to core gameplay (that were not very well implemented as someone else pointed out), etc. These DS versions are what have been ported to iOS and Android.
- danso 14y agoCall me disenchanted, but Square ports to iOS have been little more than bald, lazy attempts to cash in on years-old, sometimes decade-old properties. And I'm not talking about the original games, I'm talking about the ports (usually for PS1/2/X and Nintendo handhelds) being 10+ years old. Virtually every Square iOS port so far has dismal controls and little thought given to adapting to touch-based conventions...Making Retina-optimized text is about the biggest adaptation they've managed. For these properties, they charge premium-based prices. For iOS, they don't make them universal...which as a business decision is fine, if unpopular. But they delay the iPad versions for months for inexplicable reasons, but I guess there will be fans who'll pay another $10+ for the new version. So I don't think the porting of FF3, widely considered one of the worst of the early Final Fantasies, to be much more than another cash-in by Square. * as cdr noted, the language to market this Ouya port is a bit hyped and misleading: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4317397 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4317397
- jedahan 14y agoFinal Fantasy III for Android has been completely rethought for touch controls and it shows. Pinch to zoom for secrets, clicking on enemies to select, swiping across screens for changing characters in equipment/magic/status view. Well worth the $16.
- shinratdr 14y agoYou can do all that in the iOS version, the Android version is a pretty direct port of the iOS version. The changes you list are basically necessity when converting to a touch based interface. There are no L/R buttons, so you need to be able to swipe between characters. It's a mobile game and the screen is smaller so zooming into secrets is needed, and you need to be able to tap on enemies to select or else you'll just automatically attack the first person in the field. I don't exactly agree with GP but I do understand where he's coming from. I enjoyed FFIII for iOS and got quite far into it, but it's hardly a touch based game. 99% of the time you're manipulating a virtual joystick.
- freehunter 14y agoThe remake on the DS was interesting for the fact that they actually put quite a bit of work into it. I was happy to buy it because it looked and felt like a native DS game (full 3D graphics, new audio, etc). The Final Fantasy on my phone however, doesn't feel native. And they want $10 for it. No thanks.
- jiggy2011 14y agoFF3? I thought FF7 was the one widely regarded as a classic?
- lmm 14y agoBelieve it or not the series contains more than one "classic" game. You're right that FF7 is the most popular though; presumably they went with FF3 for its lower performance requirements.
- Elessar 14y agoMore likely they went with it because an Android port already exists.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoHighly unlikely the performance reqs between the two (specifically the DS/iOS/Android remake of FFIII vs. the PS1 FFVII) is that wide; Tegra 3 and similar chipsets are definitely capable of eclipsing both. But they already have a FFIII port mostly ready to go; FFVII has yet to be ported to anything besides PS1 and Win9x. And in true Sq fashion, they seem to be saving a FFVII remake for whenever they think they can extract the most cash from it.
- cicloid 14y agoAccording to their CEO, making FFVII is admiting defeat and that they will not be able to make a better game. They will only release a remake when: A) The money is needed/correct B) They make a better game in their view. With I suppose, overwhelming success.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI hope not, FF7 ran on a PS1
- cdr 14y agoSquareEnix already has remakes of I-IV on DS which are probably reasonably readily portable to iOS/Android; they've already released III and I on Android. You can probably expect to see II and IV on Android within a year if they continue to sell well, but probably not V or later until they're ported to a portable game system first. I know there were reports of preliminary work on V/VI for DS but nothing beyond that.
- cdr 14y agoThe Final Fantasy III remake port (as in III by the japanese numbering, not american III which was VI) has been out for awhile already on Android. It really works pretty decently for being on a phone/tablet, I recommend checking it out if you can stomach $15.99: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_enix.android_googleplay.FFIII_GP https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_eni... The game is a port of the DS remake to begin with, I doubt "coming to Ouya" is much more work than maybe adding controller support to the Android build. It looks like SquareEnix just released FFI also.
- cdr 14y agoNow that I'm more awake and reread the Ouya post, it goes to great effort to mislead which is pretty par for them. It really tries to imply that it's being released specifically for Ouya with "partnering with Square Enix to bring you", " first time gamers outside of Japan can play FFIII", "Previously unreleased in the U.S.", etc.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoTo be fair they had qualifiers like "on the TV"
- cdr 14y agoYep - stretching as far as they can to mislead without outright lying. I'm pretty certain if you didn't know that the game was already out on iOS/Android you would come away with the impression that this was some sort of exclusive deal with Ouya.
- misnome 14y agoAnd... I suspect that this is the reason why so many people are very suspicious of the project; they seem desperate to mislead as much as possible, at every opportunity. I understand that they want to drum up support and give a positive impression so that more people will join in, but a little more honesty I suspect would go a long way.
- duked 14y agoTo be honest I couldn't care less about Onlive nor FF, I would like them to focus more on either hardware such as Wifi, more Ram or an SD card port or on useful software: Mame port or some useful license like GGPO (that could really enable an xbox live like experience on arcade games). I'm a backer but probably not their main usual target I guess, I'm more looking at it like a Rasberry Pi alternative than a real gaming console.
- mtgx 14y agoI still don't understand this craving for more RAM. Does Android need that much RAM for a single game? Does iOS? Does Xbox360? The games for OUYA will not be more powerful than that. And don't expect to keep the 1st gen of OUYA for 7 years, if you really care about gaming on OUYA. OUYA is more like a smartphone - something you buy once every 1-2 years, with much improved graphics performance. ARM graphics performance improves 2x every 12 months, so 4x after 2 years. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Tegra 4 brings that much improvement alone over Tegra 3, since Tegra 3 was a pretty small chip compared to competition, even at 40nm (therefore weaker), and Tegra 4 is rumored to have 64 cores (5.3x more than Tegra 3). I would much rather like it to come with Tegra 4 or some other 2013-ready CPU/GPU than more RAM.
- cicloid 14y agoIf you read interviews and/or talk to people in the industry, they would tell you that more RAM expands the possibilities for many of the games. Even for AAA titles like Battlefield 3, the difference in 64 players in a pc to 24 players on consoles according to the developers, was mostly because of the lack of memory. 1GB is huge for a game console. Just for comparison the PlayStation 3 has 256 MB of XDR DRAM main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX.
- mtgx 14y agoBut the games on Android and iOS are limited to like 50 MB each. Why would you need more than 20x that RAM for a single game that will look pretty much the same as what you'll see on tablets and phones.
- mtkd 14y agoI don't get the negativity on HN for this project. This team is trying to disrupt a truly oligopolist market - I really hope they do it. Give them a break on marketing announcement dissection at least until you see what they build.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoOnce a few people make the Ouya exclusives people will start singing a different tune, a lot of the hype has been shot down with the logic that it's just a smartphone on a big screen, to me it's an entirely new platform waiting for someone to really make good use of it. The best part is in a few years when the Ouya exclusives are going for round two on the next gen Ouya, people will get to finally play those great Ouya games on their smart phones. (Because who knows, maybe it'll be all funny and backwards, I've seen much stranger things)
- bonch 14y agoYou've made quite a few large assumptions about the future--that there will be Ouya exclusives, that the console will last "a few years", that there will be a "next gen Ouya". This sort of pie-in-the-sky hype is exactly what people don't like about this project. It's that classic "??? Profit" joke realized as a Kickstarter project.
- mrcharles 14y agoActually, the problem is that the market they are disrupting... doesn't exist. There's a mistaken idea in the public right now that Ouya can (or will) replace dedicated consoles. That's not even remotely true. The system simply does not have the power to be that device in your home. Gamers seem to have backed this based on an idea that it's a $100 full fledged console. It is not. It is, at best, a tablet that hooks up to your tv and has a controller. At least as far as the hardware is concerned. On top of that, their release timelines aren't even remotely realistic. March? They don't even have their online store prototyped yet. They have some UI mockups and that's it. Launching in March? Yeah right. And then there's the issue with allowing the console to be fully open, using a hardware platform that is already having so many issues with piracy that developers are slowly being forced to release their games for free and supported with ads to make any money. I have no doubt that if this system ever materializes, it will make an impact, but it's a long stretch to think you'll be taking delivery of this system in March and playing Final Fantasy 3 on it.
- ThomPete 14y agoPerception is reality. To the geeks this is "just android in a box" to everyone else this is a gaming platform that comes with a lot of games for free and is dirt cheap. People seem to have forgotten on of the major reasons why the PS1 became so successful. It wasn't it's superior hardware or software or numbers of colors. It was the simple fact that it could be modded and thus allowed you to play games for free.
- slantyyz 14y ago>> To the geeks this is "just android in a box" to everyone else this is a gaming platform that comes with a lot of games for free and is dirt cheap I personally like Ouya, but realistically, the second part of your sentence should be "to everyone else this is a gaming platform that they haven't heard of". Only the nerds really know about Ouya, Joe Q. Public probably won't hear about it unless the nerds who bought the first wave can make it go viral.
- ThomPete 14y agoNever underestimate the next generations need for finding their pet pevee. They know more about what is going on than you might think :)
- aaron-lebo 14y agoGeeks are excited about it because of that. Others either aren't aware of it or would rather play games on the Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, iPad, etc they already have. The PS1 was successful because it was put out in large numbers by Sony, not because of the relatively small modding scene. They are going to have to find something more than ports from other systems to wow people.
- engtech 14y agoI haven't been following Ouya since the initial hype, but wasn't one of their initial talking points that they would only allow free games? I guess they're doing paid games now: "But that’s not the end of it: We’re promising to deliver Final Fantasy III like you’ve never seen it before – Hironobu Sakaguchi’s third installment in the role playing game franchise will be updated to exploit OUYA’s high-definition resolution in glorious graphic detail. For those of you who are new to Final Fantasy, we’ll offer a free demo so you can give it a go!"
- aaron-lebo 14y agoI believe the game either has to be free to play or have a free demo. So that requirement is easily fulfilled.
- zokier 14y agoI'd assume that Ouya would get (S)NES emulators fairly quickly, if it manages to launch successfully.