Should I buy an OUYA?

[Darth_Daver]

I have an Xbox 360, only use it for a few games a year (Mass Effect, Assasin's Creed, Halo...) plus I use it as a media box to watch my videos streaming from my computer to another display. I don't mod my phones, I used an android phone for over a year without installing a single app (beside dropbox), I don't like Minecraft and the only game I ever bought on steam was Team Fortress 2, back when it wasn't free.

So I don't know if I'll actually play with it, or should I just wait for the next Xbox?

On the professional side, I'm a .net developer (silverlight, wp7, now moving to win8-metro), interested in branching out to games and android as a platform (because there is demand for it). But I never once finished a single XNA Xbox Indie Game I started (in my free time), but I might just believe the openness of the OUYA platform might inspire me.

But I don't want to place my hopes (and free time) in a platform that may or may not take off.

So: what do you think? Will OUYA be a worthy game platform? Should I be thinking about developing to it?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It depends entirely on the pricetag. From either a consumer or a developmental standpoint, it's not really worth dropping $400 on a whole new platform that nobody knows anything about and has no real background for its relationship with game developers. As it stands, the only reason anyone bought a Wii is because it was relatively cheap. It was assumed, based on Nintendo's reputation, that the only games exclusive to the Wii were going to be either little kid games or sucky versions of a game released on Xbox; if they'd been selling them for $400, Nintendo would probably be bankrupt by now.

 

[clint g]

To put it bluntly, there is no way in hell that I'm buying a system from an un-established company at this stage of the game. Gaming is a big time business now, the chances of something like this succeeding are very slim. If I want an experience like the Ouya is planing to bring, I can just play indie games off of steam.

 

[Venardhi]

Hold out for release and see what content they have. If they do end up being able to sell it for their aim of 100 bucks then just as a media center it'll be worth it. If they miss that mark then they're going to go bankrupt anyways since most of their funding is essentially pre-orders.

Also mind that they're using essentially current-gen (as in, you could buy a phone with the same hardware months ago) phone hardware to power it. You won't be seeing next-gen games on it.

 

[sojourner]

OUYA is Android based, so work on Android based games for phones/tablets then port them over at a later date.