14 DAY TRIAL // Quite a lot of independent developers are interested in Ouya, the surprisingly popular open home console project that’s been racking up lots of money on crowd-funding website Kickstarter, but they’re still cautious and won’t support it right away.
Home consoles are still quite popular, but many gamers are now flocking to other platforms, including the PC or mobile devices.
This could change soon thanks to the Ouya project, in which a small company wants to create a new type of console that’s open to both developers and gamers, allowing them to create whatever they want for the platform.
The project has already raked in lots of money on popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter and plenty of developers, especially independent ones have begun taking into consideration the new platform for their future projects.
According to Minecraft creator and Mojang boss Markus “Notch” Persson, Ouya could finally give PC gamers the oft-rumored Steam box experience.
"I am quite frankly surprised this hasn't happened earlier," Persson told Joystiq. "Me and plenty of other people have tried connecting small PCs to their TVs and plugging in controllers in an attempt to get an open TV gaming experience that they can control, but there's been constant interface and infrastructure problems with that. And frankly, the only really good use of it was to run emulators. I hope it does well. It would be amazing. It's basically the Steam Box."
Sadly, many other developers, including Edmund McMillen of Team Meat, believe that the open nature could work against the console, as plenty of people might start corrupting its ecosystem with poor games and other such things.
"I'd love for there to be this amazing console that lets everyone develop for it... but there already was and the lack of control turned it into a garbage dump of [bad] apps, rip-off games and rehashes. I mean honestly iPad and iPhone started out with serious games trying to break in but got undercut by everyone and became a dump. This aspect of the Ouya seems flawed and could be the downfall of it if it gets legs once it releases."
Ouya is banking big on its open nature but, at least according to McMillen, this might end up causing its downfall.
As of yet, however, the project is still gathering donations on Kickstarter and will be released onto the market in December.