Skip to footer

Ouya brings free-to-play games to TVs

While gamers wait for the next Sony and Microsoft consoles, Ouya preps a $100 machine that will feature only free-to-play games. The new contender runs Android.

|
Ouya/Kickstarter
Ouya plans to challenge traditional video-game companies with a $100 console for free-to-play games.
  • By Curt Hopkins

Most free video games are found under the “casual gaming” category – word puzzles and simple online games. Ouya hopes to change that with the creation of a $100 gaming console that will bring the appeal of mobile and Facebook games to televisions.

The Ouya console runs off the Android operating system, so, as company founder Julie Uhrman says in Ouya's Kickstarter profile, smart-phone “developers already know how it works.”

Designed by Yves Behar of Jambox and One Laptop Per Child fame, the console is sleek and attractive, evoking bridge design in a big-budget sci-fi movie – or video game.

“It has everything you've learned to love,” says Uhrman on the Kickstarter page, “fast buttons, triggers, laser-precise analog sticks, a D-Pad – and we've added a touchpad for any games making the trek from mobile or tablet to the TV.”

To make the system's promise a reality, the company is raising money – a rather hefty $950,000 – through the Kickstarter crowd-funding site. Gaming has had good luck on the site, with three of the top five fundraisers being games, and each raising more than $1.5 million.

All games designed for Ouya will have a free-to-play element.

“We're handing the reins over to the developer with only one condition: at least some gameplay has to be free... Developers can offer a free demo with a full-game upgrade, in-game items or powers, or ask you to subscribe.”

The games will be available via an “app store” style library.

The tech specs include a Tegra3 quad-core processors, 1 gigabyte of RAM and 8 gigs of internal flash storage, an HDMI TV connection with support for up to 1080p HD video, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a USB 2.0 – all running on Android 4.0.

With an Android operating system, developers will also be able to bring their phone apps to the new TV system.

In order to make Ouya more than just a good idea, it will need to convert the prototype to production, secure regulatory approval, deliver developer kits for initial programmers, and fund some initial games. The project already has more than $400,000 worth of donations on its $950,000 goal in under a day. Given the way Kickstarter functions, the company must receive its entire goal by August 9, or they get none of it. Reaching that amount seems likely, given the initial interest.

“Pundits predict the death of the console, but I think instead it's exactly this kind of evolution that we'll be seeing instead,” says Karen Clark, product manager of social platform for iWin, Inc, a casual-game maker in San Francisco. “Consoles (as with most hardware) are expensive and require years of brisk sales for their makers to break even. Given that model, it's understandable that companies who make them place safe bets on partnerships with large [top-tier] game studios to make big, expensive 'blockbuster' games. With a cheap, indie console, I foresee a lot of experimentation by developers. That will be great for gamers who are looking for unique experiences." 

Clark adds that she agrees “with Uhrman's comment that this will allow indie developers to target consoles again, since many have turned to mobile, given a dearth of money making opportunities on the Big Three consoles (Microsoft Xbox360, Sony PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii).“

Casual games have become a $6 billion industry, according to the Casual Games Association. But since that figure accounts for only a small slice of the overall $25 billion video-game industry, Ouya has every financial reason to challenge industry-leaders Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

Not to mention the gameplay involved in a little guy bracing a trio of 900-pound gorillas.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Ouya brings free-to-play games to TVs
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0710/Ouya-brings-free-to-play-games-to-TVs
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe