4 ms·

Nintendo has always released low end commodity hardware.

eropple 14y ago
Not in the sense that I mean, sorry. The Ouya is barely more than a Tegra 3 reference board with some furniture around it. The internals of the Wii are custom to the Wii, and that's orders of magnitude more daunting of a project. Which does not mean that the Ouya cannot be good. (Basic microeconomics has a lot more to say on that topic.) But breathless cheering about this project "shattering the mold" doesn't really reflect reality.
- frendiversity 14y ago
  That's true, yeah, but comparisonwise power doesnt mean much. Get one quirky multiplayer 'angry birds' hit and this thing will smoke ps4 in sales.
  - eropple 14y ago
    I find that extremely unlikely, because the Ouya is a parasite platform--it exists to suck up ports from other platforms (chiefly Android phones and tablets). This makes it very easy to port away from as well, and I find it much more likely that any game with significant potential is ported away from Ouya as soon as possible to reach a platform with more extant users--removing the drive to purchase an Ouya at all. It is a problematic situation for Ouya, because they have no compelling reason to stay on the platform once you sniff the slightest success.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I agree, at best for game devs the Ouya will be a test market for games before they are ported to other consoles. The only place it might have an advantage will be for games that allow third party modding. Games with a side market for community DLC could be an interesting idea.
      - eropple 14y ago
        It's funny that you mention that, as I'm exploring exactly that for Android right now. =)
    - sp332 14y ago
      Android games are (so far) touch-oriented, whereas the Ouya has a console controller with analog sticks and triggers, shoulder buttons, d-pad, etc. It may be easy enough to port Android games to the Ouya, but it's also easy to make a game that doesn't port back well.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        I think he means games being ported to another controller based platform like the Xbox. If you are an indie dev who releases a game for the Ouya and gets some respectable sales you are quickly going to do the math on how many more sales you would get from a Xbox/PS version. As a result consumers are more likely to think "Oh, an Ouya game. I'll just wait 3 months for it to show up on Xbox".
      - eropple 14y ago
        Sure, that's true. Now the bigger question: who'd bother writing those games primarily-for-Ouya in the first place? You've got Windows PCs right over there, Macs and Linux PCs accessible without too much more work, and if you play your cards right, you can even deploy to the 360 (yeah, XNA's EOL'd, but it's still viable for XBLIG, and that's a lot better of a controller-based platform than Ouya is). In the rare, doubt-it'll-happen case of a hit game coming out first on Ouya, I would bet we'd see it on Steam, for cheaper, within six months--because porting will, by necessity, be That Easy. Ouya could, depending on tech stack get a port in that situation (and I've considered it for my own project because I'll already have a gamepad API for the Windows/Mac release), but it will never be a leading platform that people actively target because the market share is infinitesmal. There are too many better options in front of it. EDIT: Also, bear in mind that Ouya isn't doing anything groundbreaking with their gamepad stuff - the gamepad APIs already exist in Android 4.x. The only Ouya-specific stuff I have seen is in their purchasing layer.
        sp332 14y ago
        PC's are not very living room friendly, cost more than $100, and don't come with console controllers. 360's are more expensive to develop for, are prohibitively expensive to push frequent updates to, and are heavily censored. They also cost more than $100.
    - frendiversity 14y ago
      All it will take is one "Angry Birds" hit for 20 million people to snap one up in a month (or create huge demand and no supply), and suddenly it's the hot console, which is a pretty "compelling" reason.
  - yannickt 14y ago
    It's not really about power though, it's more about exclusivity and uniqueness. For example, the Wii wasn't as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, but it had a unique control scheme, and exclusive games that took advantage of it at launch. No other platform offered even a remotely similar gameplay experience at the time. It has been said that some games were only possible on the PS3 (GoW 3). The Xbox 360 is best experienced with Xbox Live, which leaves other console gaming networks in the dust. The upcoming Steam Box will have Steam. For the Ouya to "smoke" other consoles in sales, it will have to offer something unique, and that looks like a really tall order at this point.
    - deleted 14y ago
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jug6ernaut 14y ago
Idk that I would agree with "low end commodity hardware", when almost every one of the consoles Nintendo has released has been completely revolutionary. This has been the case many times. But this is besides the point, ask anyone what sells nintendo consoles, its not the consoles. Its the amazing 1st party games.
- deleted 14y ago
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georgemcbay 14y ago
Not quite "always". The N64 particularly was pushing the envelope for consumer hardware at release and both the NES and SNES were quite advanced for their time (though their USA releases lagged quite a bit behind the Japanese/Famicom releases, which means at the time of US release they weren't quite as impressive). They certainly stopped focusing on advanced hardware (in the raw CPU-power sense) post-N64 though.
- frendiversity 14y ago
  NES and SNES were underpowered for the time compared to home computers, which most people didn't care about, which is why they succeeded. N64 was a bit more modern, you're correct, because they went with the SGI/MIPS, but I was distracted from Mario 64 by GLQuake 16 player LAN deathmatches, so..
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    I disagree that they were under-powered compared to home computers, at least for their intended purposes of playing arcade-style videogames. The computers of the time by and large didn't have the sort of dedicated tilemap-scrolling hardware that allowed those systems to run arcade-style games so smoothly. It wasn't until Commander Keen (circa 1990) that PC systems were capable of doing these sorts of games justice (and then just barely) and the videocard you used in such a system would cost significantly more than an entire NES/SNES console. Of course there are other systems like the Amiga (my first two systems were a C64 and then later an Amiga 500) and the Atari ST that did have more game-friendly hardware but they were also nowhere close in terms of price range to the consoles and while more game-friendly than PCs still never quite achieved the pure tilemap-scrolling bliss of the dedicated consoles. Of course, after the explosion of 3D graphics with the Rendition and the original Voodoo, PCs took off in terms of raw gaming power and have left console systems in the dust since, but it wasn't always that way.

Not in the sense that I mean, sorry. The Ouya is barely more than a Tegra 3 reference board with some furniture around it. The internals of the Wii are custom to the Wii, and that's orders of magnitude more daunting of a project. Which does not mean that the Ouya cannot be good. (Basic microeconomics has a lot more to say on that topic.) But breathless cheering about this project "shattering the mold" doesn't really reflect reality.

frendiversity 14y ago
That's true, yeah, but comparisonwise power doesnt mean much. Get one quirky multiplayer 'angry birds' hit and this thing will smoke ps4 in sales.
- eropple 14y ago
  I find that extremely unlikely, because the Ouya is a parasite platform--it exists to suck up ports from other platforms (chiefly Android phones and tablets). This makes it very easy to port away from as well, and I find it much more likely that any game with significant potential is ported away from Ouya as soon as possible to reach a platform with more extant users--removing the drive to purchase an Ouya at all. It is a problematic situation for Ouya, because they have no compelling reason to stay on the platform once you sniff the slightest success.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I agree, at best for game devs the Ouya will be a test market for games before they are ported to other consoles. The only place it might have an advantage will be for games that allow third party modding. Games with a side market for community DLC could be an interesting idea.
    - eropple 14y ago
      It's funny that you mention that, as I'm exploring exactly that for Android right now. =)
  - sp332 14y ago
    Android games are (so far) touch-oriented, whereas the Ouya has a console controller with analog sticks and triggers, shoulder buttons, d-pad, etc. It may be easy enough to port Android games to the Ouya, but it's also easy to make a game that doesn't port back well.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I think he means games being ported to another controller based platform like the Xbox. If you are an indie dev who releases a game for the Ouya and gets some respectable sales you are quickly going to do the math on how many more sales you would get from a Xbox/PS version. As a result consumers are more likely to think "Oh, an Ouya game. I'll just wait 3 months for it to show up on Xbox".
    - eropple 14y ago
      Sure, that's true. Now the bigger question: who'd bother writing those games primarily-for-Ouya in the first place? You've got Windows PCs right over there, Macs and Linux PCs accessible without too much more work, and if you play your cards right, you can even deploy to the 360 (yeah, XNA's EOL'd, but it's still viable for XBLIG, and that's a lot better of a controller-based platform than Ouya is). In the rare, doubt-it'll-happen case of a hit game coming out first on Ouya, I would bet we'd see it on Steam, for cheaper, within six months--because porting will, by necessity, be That Easy. Ouya could, depending on tech stack get a port in that situation (and I've considered it for my own project because I'll already have a gamepad API for the Windows/Mac release), but it will never be a leading platform that people actively target because the market share is infinitesmal. There are too many better options in front of it. EDIT: Also, bear in mind that Ouya isn't doing anything groundbreaking with their gamepad stuff - the gamepad APIs already exist in Android 4.x. The only Ouya-specific stuff I have seen is in their purchasing layer.
      - sp332 14y ago
        PC's are not very living room friendly, cost more than $100, and don't come with console controllers. 360's are more expensive to develop for, are prohibitively expensive to push frequent updates to, and are heavily censored. They also cost more than $100.
  - frendiversity 14y ago
    All it will take is one "Angry Birds" hit for 20 million people to snap one up in a month (or create huge demand and no supply), and suddenly it's the hot console, which is a pretty "compelling" reason.
- yannickt 14y ago
  It's not really about power though, it's more about exclusivity and uniqueness. For example, the Wii wasn't as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, but it had a unique control scheme, and exclusive games that took advantage of it at launch. No other platform offered even a remotely similar gameplay experience at the time. It has been said that some games were only possible on the PS3 (GoW 3). The Xbox 360 is best experienced with Xbox Live, which leaves other console gaming networks in the dust. The upcoming Steam Box will have Steam. For the Ouya to "smoke" other consoles in sales, it will have to offer something unique, and that looks like a really tall order at this point.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

jug6ernaut 14y ago

Idk that I would agree with "low end commodity hardware", when almost every one of the consoles Nintendo has released has been completely revolutionary. This has been the case many times. But this is besides the point, ask anyone what sells nintendo consoles, its not the consoles. Its the amazing 1st party games.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

georgemcbay 14y ago

Not quite "always". The N64 particularly was pushing the envelope for consumer hardware at release and both the NES and SNES were quite advanced for their time (though their USA releases lagged quite a bit behind the Japanese/Famicom releases, which means at the time of US release they weren't quite as impressive). They certainly stopped focusing on advanced hardware (in the raw CPU-power sense) post-N64 though.

frendiversity 14y ago
NES and SNES were underpowered for the time compared to home computers, which most people didn't care about, which is why they succeeded. N64 was a bit more modern, you're correct, because they went with the SGI/MIPS, but I was distracted from Mario 64 by GLQuake 16 player LAN deathmatches, so..
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I disagree that they were under-powered compared to home computers, at least for their intended purposes of playing arcade-style videogames. The computers of the time by and large didn't have the sort of dedicated tilemap-scrolling hardware that allowed those systems to run arcade-style games so smoothly. It wasn't until Commander Keen (circa 1990) that PC systems were capable of doing these sorts of games justice (and then just barely) and the videocard you used in such a system would cost significantly more than an entire NES/SNES console. Of course there are other systems like the Amiga (my first two systems were a C64 and then later an Amiga 500) and the Atari ST that did have more game-friendly hardware but they were also nowhere close in terms of price range to the consoles and while more game-friendly than PCs still never quite achieved the pure tilemap-scrolling bliss of the dedicated consoles. Of course, after the explosion of 3D graphics with the Rendition and the original Voodoo, PCs took off in terms of raw gaming power and have left console systems in the dust since, but it wasn't always that way.