8 ms·

Google is developing its own Android game console - Report

76 points by drawkbox 13y ago

drawkbox 13y ago
Apple and Google will most likely be the real 'new consoles'. Maybe this will make Microsoft allow self-publishing. Looking forward to this. Apple was always going to take their appstore apps/games to the TV and games are always a huge boon to that. "Wall Street Journal sources suggest the move is motivated not simply by the recent launch of the Ouya and the upcoming GameStick but also on expectations that Apple will be introducing game support with an upcoming version of Apple TV." They will also allow self-publishing like their appstores on mobile because unlike Microsoft/XBone they realize larger markets/economies sell more hardware and make more money, in the end they also allow and create games that are more fun. Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that set is better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market. Gonna be funny when Microsoft has to change tune on that one as well. Also Apple TV and Google consoles will be micro and more like OUYA, less of a financial burden than powerful consoles like Xbone. Sony has it right with PS4 and is allowing self-publishing, which will in turn sell more hardware and get more games on there. Microsoft is just making poor moves on open storefronts.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  >Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that set is better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market. I strongly dispute this point, while there may be a few decent mobile titles, the quality and number of quality titles is still nowhere near traditional platforms.
  - pandaman 13y ago
    Indeed, there are 850000 apps in Google Play store according to Wikipedia, if 1% had been better than any console market we'd had hundreds (hard to say how many of those are games, but I've heard it's a significant part of the apps there) of games better than such console titles as Metal Gear or Final Fantasy.
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,” Gabe Newell. John Carmack on this point: “I was really happy that when mobile came along with the more ‘pure’ games, they didn’t have to be a $50 game that had man-centuries in them,” Carmack tells Ars Technica. “You can have these small things that cost people a couple bucks.” “I don’t have a lot of free time and I don’t have 50 hours for Skyrim. That’s not to take anything away from the massive titles, but it’s great to have this broad spectrum of gaming,” Carmack added. Yes there will still be blockbuster games that can't be made on the current devices (although I'd argue tablets and TV consoles will surpass game consoles not long after the 2013 refresh). The idea is that you have so much competition that games and innovation have to become more fun. On controlled environments that level of competition is not explored because of the high dollar amount needed to play or compete. Game companies like Halfbrick, Firemint, and others wouldn't exist without the openness of mobile. If consoles were truly open there would be games that the bigger companies cannot even risk trying that are immensely fun. PC games allowed anyone in and companies like id software appeared, leading to PC games from Valve as one example. Market determination of good is better when bigger. The internet itself is an example of this. Would Hacker News exist if there were only 10 publishers of content on the web? Bigger and more open always makes for better content. Even if not now, it will shortly. Games have gotten back to arcade level fun rather than trying to create movies. Controlled, top down ivory tower markets never create better content, the currents get too stagnant.
    - throwaway2048 13y ago
      Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,” While this might be true in isolation, ie. a widgetbox with 30M sales is a strictly a better economy than the same widgetbox with 10M sales, I do not believe it to be transitive ie. Widgetbox @ 30M sales vs PlayBox360 @ 10M sales. This played out in the last console generation with the wii vastly outselling both the ps3 and the xbox360, but having an inferior library. Smartphones and tablets are by no means new, nor niche platforms at this point (outselling every other gaming platform by a mile), but id argue that by and large they have failed to produce the kind of quality games available on say, the DS/3DS. I cannot even think of one mobile title that measures up to even an average DS game.
hkmurakami 13y ago
So the players are Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, and Vavle vying for living room media dominance through one strategy or niche play or another. I have my popcorn ready. This competition will be good for us consumers.
- Steko 13y ago
  "This competition will be good for us consumers." Not sure how strong this point is. For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the consoles you don't have. For another you're going to get shitty ports on a lot of them. Finally there will be an inevitable shakedown to 2-3 players and if you've invested in one of the losers well just ask the people that bought 3DO's and Atari Jaguars and all the other losers of the early 90's console wars how great that worked out for them in the end. Game devs are already competing with each other for your time and dollars. Beyond that you only need 2 major consoles to put pressure on each other to keep prices honest.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    > For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the consoles you don't have. Exclusives are not good for consumers. If the companies that make them are punished accordingly, maybe they will learn.
steve19 13y ago
I love Android, but Google has a terrible record with these kind of devices. Google TV is a pretty poor system, it really should be more simple and look more like XBMC, and the (original) Nexus Q speaks for itself.
- Lerc 13y ago
  Google TV, Nexus Q etc are trying to crack a different nut, and one of the hardest ones out there. The fact that these things are called set-top-boxes in an era where TV's aren't big enough to put anything on top of them is an indicator how long people have been trying to make it work. XBMC has been most successful because They have focused on providing people what they want. Every company has delivered something that they would like people to have (and ideally pay them lots for content). Consoles on the other hand seem to be marketed by Black magic, Hype, and dodgy stats. That does seem to be more Microsoft's game than Google's, but they are gaining ground.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  I figured they are making a combined TV and game device. Heck some Rokus come with Angry Birds and games for purchase, so it wouldn't be the first time.
andrewstuart 13y ago
Does that mean games built in Java?
- drawkbox 13y ago
  Android is Java and the SDK is but the NDK (native) allows C/C++ since Android 2.3. Most games are built using that now with Java wrappers where needed for UI if any needed. Most are straight C/C++ using OpenGL ES. Also tools like Unity convert to C/C++/Java for Android and C/C++/Objective-C for Apple/iOS. But yes you can do a game in Java since is will be Android and the SDK supports it. Most games though are C/C++ for porting reasons, that can get you desktop and all mobile platforms. Windows Phone 8 also recently allows native finally (they really messed up not allowing this in Windows Phone 7 and lost lots of market share due to difficult ports).
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    However C and C++ developers are forced to either reach for a middleware solution, or spend quite some time wrapping Android APIs. For anything outside graphics, sound, hardware sensors and sockets wrapping Java APIs via JNI is required. The new Games API released at this year's Google IO is Java only and the bug request for providing a NDK version of it was closed. Also at the same Google IO, Google was advocating using Renderscript for CPU intensive tasks. The NDK bug tracker is full of broken code generation issues and the move for Android Studio still does not offer a path for C and C++ developers. Developers targeting iOS, WP8 and Blackberry have a much better vendor support in terms of C and C++ tooling.
    - drawkbox 13y ago
      True but have you tried to port an engine to run on consoles Xbox360 or PS3? 10x worse with special hardware hooks, crappy apis, older apis (dx9, custom opengl), strange requirements for async and networking and a host of other problems including compliance + approval costs, devkits, and platform lock-in. This all leads to insurmountable costs and lessens the chance of successful games. PS4 has solved lots of this moving to more standard architecture (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlayStation_4_with_Mark_Cerny.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlaySta...) but Xbox you still have to port in DirectX/3d and they all have strange requirements like requiring a publisher in this day and age of self-publishing and open app stores. Many times these wrappers try to get developers locked into engines and result in older, crappier outcomes. Leading to situations like recreating the string class, threading libraries, graphics libraries, memory managers etc 15 times. All of that focus on tech takes away from gameplay development. So I agree middleware like Unity allow companies to focus on making games rather than building the same tech everyone else is building on each iteration and years of development hours. Building in C/C++ with wrappers is still the way to go and the most portable. Unity uses this underneath, cocos2d-x also have ports of tech, so many tools to help with this now instead of going full custom although if you do go custom it is still C/C++ core, with wrappers and platform specific code for file handling, threads, graphics, audio etc etc.
mh- 13y ago
cool, this can sit next to the Nexus Q from I/O.
- vladikoff 13y ago
  If you do not like your nexus q, maybe donate it to an education facility where students can hack on it
frozenport 13y ago
I can't think of many fun games for Android. What are we paying for? Old Final Fantasy and GTA3? I don't see a market for this until their games improve which is nontrovial given the poor graphics performance of these so called consoles.
- benologist 13y ago
  I've pretty much settled on just buying Humble Bundles to get new Android games. On iOS I'm much more willing to take chances especially on trusted sources like toucharcade.com that I haven't found an equivalent for. For graphics performance I really think we reached a point years ago that these devices are capable of that are more than enough for most people.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Are you comparing an XBOX to an Android phone? Android is an OS, not a hardware platform. It can be deployed to arbitrarily powerful hardware, so long as the graphics drivers are written.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    There are few games and the hardware is crap compared to a console. Doesn't look like it is changing.
michaelpinto 13y ago
Sometimes Google feels unfocused to me, and this is a good example of this. This reminds me of the Nexus Q which came out a year ago — and was never backed a real national (or international) ad campaign. Is Google really ready to make a real game platform, or is this just another android thingie? In the same way that Apple struggles with software services Google really has a way to go with hardware. And I don't mean just making good hardware, but marketing it to a mass audience.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - optymizer 13y ago
    There's the Android NDK, which can be used to port C and C++ games. Some plumbing required.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Yeah, on Android C and C++ developers are second class citizens when compared to what they enjoy on other mobile platforms.
- gohrt 13y ago
  The Nexus Q feels like Google realized it was a dead product as soon as the first shipment left the factory, before it was publicly announced.
- mrtron 13y ago
  The Nexus Q feels like the Nexus One. An experiment paving the way into a market. A hardware beta test. I expect to see an amazing Samsung gaming+streaming machine running Android.
  - michaelpinto 13y ago
shmerl 13y ago
Only Valve works on a real glibc Linux console though.
_pmf_ 13y ago
I'll just take this as another of Google's side project that generate some buzz but ultimately lead nowhere.
- tjbiddle 13y ago
  If it 'generates some buzz' but in doing so helps push others to follow suit and help build the market - Then I'll count it as a win. Also, if it ends up being enough of a threat - Maybe it will push Microsoft into allowing self publishing.
Pxtl 13y ago
Finally. They should've been on this over a year ago.
ensmotko 13y ago
I've been anticipating rumors such as these ever since Google announced Google Game Services. I just hope said services get improved before the actual console launches.
pandaman 13y ago
I doubt they are aiming at the PS4/X1. Making hardware was never Google's forte and you need to be very good at that to compete with either system. My guess they want another pass at Google TV.
- dman 13y ago
  Yet they make the best non apple laptop out there in the market right now.
  - pandaman 13y ago
    I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware, are not they? If not I stand corrected.
    - dman 13y ago
      Whose laptops are not off the shelf hardware anymore? ie I am sure someone else manufactures them to googles specs - but thats the same for apple, dell, hp etc. From the moment you pick up a chromebook pixel you get the feeling that you normally get from apple devices - that someone thought this whole thing through. Actually the chromebook pixel and the htc one are the only two devices off late which had this effect on me.
      - pandaman 13y ago
        I was talking about consoles. They are not off the shelf. Even the Xbox (though it was pretty close).
        dman 13y ago
        "I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware"
        pandaman 13y ago
        And they are, apparently.
riquardo0 13y ago
Google has taken a jab at games before (Google plus Games anyone) but unsuccessful, not sure if they'll be able to get into it ever.

76 points by drawkbox 13y ago

Apple and Google will most likely be the real 'new consoles'. Maybe this will make Microsoft allow self-publishing. Looking forward to this. Apple was always going to take their appstore apps/games to the TV and games are always a huge boon to that. "Wall Street Journal sources suggest the move is motivated not simply by the recent launch of the Ouya and the upcoming GameStick but also on expectations that Apple will be introducing game support with an upcoming version of Apple TV." They will also allow self-publishing like their appstores on mobile because unlike Microsoft/XBone they realize larger markets/economies sell more hardware and make more money, in the end they also allow and create games that are more fun. Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that set is better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market. Gonna be funny when Microsoft has to change tune on that one as well. Also Apple TV and Google consoles will be micro and more like OUYA, less of a financial burden than powerful consoles like Xbone. Sony has it right with PS4 and is allowing self-publishing, which will in turn sell more hardware and get more games on there. Microsoft is just making poor moves on open storefronts.

throwaway2048 13y ago
>Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that set is better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market. I strongly dispute this point, while there may be a few decent mobile titles, the quality and number of quality titles is still nowhere near traditional platforms.
- pandaman 13y ago
  Indeed, there are 850000 apps in Google Play store according to Wikipedia, if 1% had been better than any console market we'd had hundreds (hard to say how many of those are games, but I've heard it's a significant part of the apps there) of games better than such console titles as Metal Gear or Final Fantasy.
- drawkbox 13y ago
  Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,” Gabe Newell. John Carmack on this point: “I was really happy that when mobile came along with the more ‘pure’ games, they didn’t have to be a $50 game that had man-centuries in them,” Carmack tells Ars Technica. “You can have these small things that cost people a couple bucks.” “I don’t have a lot of free time and I don’t have 50 hours for Skyrim. That’s not to take anything away from the massive titles, but it’s great to have this broad spectrum of gaming,” Carmack added. Yes there will still be blockbuster games that can't be made on the current devices (although I'd argue tablets and TV consoles will surpass game consoles not long after the 2013 refresh). The idea is that you have so much competition that games and innovation have to become more fun. On controlled environments that level of competition is not explored because of the high dollar amount needed to play or compete. Game companies like Halfbrick, Firemint, and others wouldn't exist without the openness of mobile. If consoles were truly open there would be games that the bigger companies cannot even risk trying that are immensely fun. PC games allowed anyone in and companies like id software appeared, leading to PC games from Valve as one example. Market determination of good is better when bigger. The internet itself is an example of this. Would Hacker News exist if there were only 10 publishers of content on the web? Bigger and more open always makes for better content. Even if not now, it will shortly. Games have gotten back to arcade level fun rather than trying to create movies. Controlled, top down ivory tower markets never create better content, the currents get too stagnant.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,” While this might be true in isolation, ie. a widgetbox with 30M sales is a strictly a better economy than the same widgetbox with 10M sales, I do not believe it to be transitive ie. Widgetbox @ 30M sales vs PlayBox360 @ 10M sales. This played out in the last console generation with the wii vastly outselling both the ps3 and the xbox360, but having an inferior library. Smartphones and tablets are by no means new, nor niche platforms at this point (outselling every other gaming platform by a mile), but id argue that by and large they have failed to produce the kind of quality games available on say, the DS/3DS. I cannot even think of one mobile title that measures up to even an average DS game.

hkmurakami 13y ago

So the players are Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, and Vavle vying for living room media dominance through one strategy or niche play or another. I have my popcorn ready. This competition will be good for us consumers.

Steko 13y ago
"This competition will be good for us consumers." Not sure how strong this point is. For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the consoles you don't have. For another you're going to get shitty ports on a lot of them. Finally there will be an inevitable shakedown to 2-3 players and if you've invested in one of the losers well just ask the people that bought 3DO's and Atari Jaguars and all the other losers of the early 90's console wars how great that worked out for them in the end. Game devs are already competing with each other for your time and dollars. Beyond that you only need 2 major consoles to put pressure on each other to keep prices honest.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  > For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the consoles you don't have. Exclusives are not good for consumers. If the companies that make them are punished accordingly, maybe they will learn.

steve19 13y ago

I love Android, but Google has a terrible record with these kind of devices. Google TV is a pretty poor system, it really should be more simple and look more like XBMC, and the (original) Nexus Q speaks for itself.

Lerc 13y ago
Google TV, Nexus Q etc are trying to crack a different nut, and one of the hardest ones out there. The fact that these things are called set-top-boxes in an era where TV's aren't big enough to put anything on top of them is an indicator how long people have been trying to make it work. XBMC has been most successful because They have focused on providing people what they want. Every company has delivered something that they would like people to have (and ideally pay them lots for content). Consoles on the other hand seem to be marketed by Black magic, Hype, and dodgy stats. That does seem to be more Microsoft's game than Google's, but they are gaining ground.
rogerbinns 13y ago
I figured they are making a combined TV and game device. Heck some Rokus come with Angry Birds and games for purchase, so it wouldn't be the first time.

andrewstuart 13y ago

Does that mean games built in Java?

drawkbox 13y ago
Android is Java and the SDK is but the NDK (native) allows C/C++ since Android 2.3. Most games are built using that now with Java wrappers where needed for UI if any needed. Most are straight C/C++ using OpenGL ES. Also tools like Unity convert to C/C++/Java for Android and C/C++/Objective-C for Apple/iOS. But yes you can do a game in Java since is will be Android and the SDK supports it. Most games though are C/C++ for porting reasons, that can get you desktop and all mobile platforms. Windows Phone 8 also recently allows native finally (they really messed up not allowing this in Windows Phone 7 and lost lots of market share due to difficult ports).
- pjmlp 13y ago
  However C and C++ developers are forced to either reach for a middleware solution, or spend quite some time wrapping Android APIs. For anything outside graphics, sound, hardware sensors and sockets wrapping Java APIs via JNI is required. The new Games API released at this year's Google IO is Java only and the bug request for providing a NDK version of it was closed. Also at the same Google IO, Google was advocating using Renderscript for CPU intensive tasks. The NDK bug tracker is full of broken code generation issues and the move for Android Studio still does not offer a path for C and C++ developers. Developers targeting iOS, WP8 and Blackberry have a much better vendor support in terms of C and C++ tooling.
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    True but have you tried to port an engine to run on consoles Xbox360 or PS3? 10x worse with special hardware hooks, crappy apis, older apis (dx9, custom opengl), strange requirements for async and networking and a host of other problems including compliance + approval costs, devkits, and platform lock-in. This all leads to insurmountable costs and lessens the chance of successful games. PS4 has solved lots of this moving to more standard architecture (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlayStation_4_with_Mark_Cerny.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189368/Inside_the_PlaySta...) but Xbox you still have to port in DirectX/3d and they all have strange requirements like requiring a publisher in this day and age of self-publishing and open app stores. Many times these wrappers try to get developers locked into engines and result in older, crappier outcomes. Leading to situations like recreating the string class, threading libraries, graphics libraries, memory managers etc 15 times. All of that focus on tech takes away from gameplay development. So I agree middleware like Unity allow companies to focus on making games rather than building the same tech everyone else is building on each iteration and years of development hours. Building in C/C++ with wrappers is still the way to go and the most portable. Unity uses this underneath, cocos2d-x also have ports of tech, so many tools to help with this now instead of going full custom although if you do go custom it is still C/C++ core, with wrappers and platform specific code for file handling, threads, graphics, audio etc etc.

mh- 13y ago

cool, this can sit next to the Nexus Q from I/O.

vladikoff 13y ago
If you do not like your nexus q, maybe donate it to an education facility where students can hack on it

frozenport 13y ago

I can't think of many fun games for Android. What are we paying for? Old Final Fantasy and GTA3? I don't see a market for this until their games improve which is nontrovial given the poor graphics performance of these so called consoles.

benologist 13y ago
I've pretty much settled on just buying Humble Bundles to get new Android games. On iOS I'm much more willing to take chances especially on trusted sources like toucharcade.com that I haven't found an equivalent for. For graphics performance I really think we reached a point years ago that these devices are capable of that are more than enough for most people.
gohrt 13y ago
Are you comparing an XBOX to an Android phone? Android is an OS, not a hardware platform. It can be deployed to arbitrarily powerful hardware, so long as the graphics drivers are written.
- frozenport 13y ago
  There are few games and the hardware is crap compared to a console. Doesn't look like it is changing.

michaelpinto 13y ago

Sometimes Google feels unfocused to me, and this is a good example of this. This reminds me of the Nexus Q which came out a year ago — and was never backed a real national (or international) ad campaign. Is Google really ready to make a real game platform, or is this just another android thingie? In the same way that Apple struggles with software services Google really has a way to go with hardware. And I don't mean just making good hardware, but marketing it to a mass audience.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- optymizer 13y ago
  There's the Android NDK, which can be used to port C and C++ games. Some plumbing required.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Yeah, on Android C and C++ developers are second class citizens when compared to what they enjoy on other mobile platforms.
gohrt 13y ago
The Nexus Q feels like Google realized it was a dead product as soon as the first shipment left the factory, before it was publicly announced.
mrtron 13y ago
The Nexus Q feels like the Nexus One. An experiment paving the way into a market. A hardware beta test. I expect to see an amazing Samsung gaming+streaming machine running Android.
- michaelpinto 13y ago

shmerl 13y ago

Only Valve works on a real glibc Linux console though.

_pmf_ 13y ago

I'll just take this as another of Google's side project that generate some buzz but ultimately lead nowhere.

tjbiddle 13y ago
If it 'generates some buzz' but in doing so helps push others to follow suit and help build the market - Then I'll count it as a win. Also, if it ends up being enough of a threat - Maybe it will push Microsoft into allowing self publishing.

Pxtl 13y ago

Finally. They should've been on this over a year ago.

ensmotko 13y ago

I've been anticipating rumors such as these ever since Google announced Google Game Services. I just hope said services get improved before the actual console launches.

pandaman 13y ago

I doubt they are aiming at the PS4/X1. Making hardware was never Google's forte and you need to be very good at that to compete with either system. My guess they want another pass at Google TV.

dman 13y ago
Yet they make the best non apple laptop out there in the market right now.
- pandaman 13y ago
  I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware, are not they? If not I stand corrected.
  - dman 13y ago
    Whose laptops are not off the shelf hardware anymore? ie I am sure someone else manufactures them to googles specs - but thats the same for apple, dell, hp etc. From the moment you pick up a chromebook pixel you get the feeling that you normally get from apple devices - that someone thought this whole thing through. Actually the chromebook pixel and the htc one are the only two devices off late which had this effect on me.
    - pandaman 13y ago
      I was talking about consoles. They are not off the shelf. Even the Xbox (though it was pretty close).
      - dman 13y ago
        "I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware"
        pandaman 13y ago
        And they are, apparently.

riquardo0 13y ago

Google has taken a jab at games before (Google plus Games anyone) but unsuccessful, not sure if they'll be able to get into it ever.