The new computer should outmuscle Android consoles using mobile chips, and may be able to run the Linux version of Steambox.

Android gaming at home has mostly been limited to low-power consoles like the long-awaited Ouya, but a new company hopes to beef up the platform with some serious gaming PC hardware.

Unlike competitors that rely on mobile chips like ARM processors, iConsole.tv is readying a device that uses an x86 CPU, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB hybrid disk drive/SSD, and an undisclosed GPU. In other words, it’s built more like a mini-gaming PC than a feeble Android console.

It also will run a Linux Desktop mode, which means users will be able to access Steam for Linux to get even more games than the Android ecosystem already provides. Mobile Media Ventures even throws in support for CableCARD to turn iConsole.tv into a home theater PC.

Currently, the company is offering a $999 Developer Kit that features an Intel Ivy Bridge processor, but only integrated graphics. It explains that Ivy Bridge vastly outperforms other chips running Android, and that the graphics card that will ship with the actual console will be “at least two to three times more powerful” than Intel’s integrated graphics.

The device lacks a price yet, as well as a firm release date. Right now, Mobile Media Ventures says it hopes to launch iConsole.tv in the winter. That vagueness leaves open the possibility that this will turn out to be vaporware, but the company did let Engadget gets its hands on a Developer Kit to show off its capabilities. In an interview, CEO Christopher Price extolled the potential of Android not only for serious gaming, but also as “the future of personal computing.” He also said iConsole.tv will be priced well below the cost of the Developer Kit.

Does iConsole.tv have a future as a gaming PC for your HDTV and built on Android? Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to find out several months from now.

By Cormac Foster @readwrite.com


After a longer-than-expected wait, some shipping glitches, and a good deal of anticipation, open-source, crowd-funded, cloud-gaming, Android-powered Ouya game console arrived in Friday’s mail. Unpacking the box, plugged it in, and fired it up. After 24 hours, having come to some conclusions about the device – though maybe they’re not all positive.

Ouya: Out Of The Box

The Console: The first thing noticed about the console itself was its size. The thing is small – about the size of a Rubik’s Cube. With no optical drive or expansion slots, there’s no reason for the device to be any bigger, but it was still a little jarring. It’s also pretty idiot-proof. Plug in the included power adapter and HDMI cable, press the only button on the device, and you’re ready to get started.



The Controller: The controller was reputed to be the system’s crown jewel, and overall, it’s a success. The pop-off panels for accessing the dual battery compartments seem a little insecure at first, and we would have preferred a more traditional hinged compartment on the back, but the Ouya design seems rigid enough once everything is snapped together, and it’s probably cheaper to fix, down the line.



Other than that, the pad, sticks and buttons worked as planned, the controller fit my average-sized hand nicely, and a player would be able to forget about controls and focus on the games immediately. And that’s really the point. Worlds more comfortable than any Sony controller, and somewhat more natural than the Xbox 360’s. If this controller shipped with a next-gen system, it wouldn’t be an upset. Ouya Setup

The hardware was great, and pairing the controllers was straightforward. When logging into an account, though, the Ouya’s Kickstarter roots started to show. Setup went smoothly enough, but even a little documentation might have been nice. The box included only an FCC-mandated warning: no manual or diagrams. The log in process was simple, but to retrieve the username registered months ago, having to swap to a laptop and Google “Ouya username retrieval” was essential. An inline “Retrieve Username” next to the “Lost Password” link in the setup screen wouldn’t have been terribly hard to add.

With any luck, that retail units will ship with more documentation and a smoothed-out interface. As an early backer, a reviewer and someone who’d like to see this type of project succeed, the Best Buy set is accustomed to a higher level of hand-holding.

The Ouya UI

Once you’re logged in, the Ouya interface is pretty clean, but there are not too many more positives worth noting. It’s tough to make four menu items a jumble, but Ouya somehow succeeded. The designers may have been trying a bit too hard to make things cool.

The menu items:

PLAY: Play the games you’ve downloaded. Simple enough.



DISCOVER: This is the Ouya app store. DISCOVER is a horribly awkward list of downloadable games, with confusingly named sub-menus (What’s the difference between CHECK IT, STAFFPICKS, and FAVS, anyway?). The GENRES section is more useful, but it reveals an unfortunate lack of content designed for the device. As of the weekend, there were only six games in the DUAL STICK category and only three applications in APPS.

MAKE: Information for software developers that really doesn’t belong in a main menu.

MANAGE: System configuration.

Understanding what Ouya was going for, but everything abut the interface screams BETA, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to do it right. Dropping a user straight into PLAY, provide a prominent link to the store, and link to games that are related to the one currently playing. Hide the rest somewhere boring. Done.

Some of the gaps should get filled when more titles become available, but that list is likely to to see a lot of static. The bar is pretty low for Android games, so not every entry will be up to par for console games.

That’s where some content curation could help. Branded channels (e.g., something by IndieCade or one of the gaming mags) could really help users find games worth playing. So could a healthy peer rating system and some filtering based on past ratings. The good news is that all of this can be fixed in software. The bad news is that the retail release date is coming up fast.

Ouya Games

For the most part, the available games are what you’d expect of Android games: small, fun, potentially addictive and disposable. There were some standouts like Dub Wars, which took advantage of the hardware in interesting ways, and some others that locked up my system (Beast Boxing Turbo never made it past the loading screen and forced a hard reset), but there’s certainly no “must-have” franchise Ouya title yet.



Final Fantasy III: What about Final Fantasy III? If you’ve played the Android version on other devices, you know what you’re getting. If you played the original version 20 years ago, it’s a refreshing trip down memory lane. FFIII offers Game Boy mechanics with 3D graphics: think Pokemon Stadium on the N64 compared to Pokemon Yellow and Red. Younger gamers without an appreciation of history will probably get bored very fast. It’s great to see a major studio throw some weight behind the Ouya, but this game is not a kingmaker.

The Ouya Verdict

The gaming industry needs a kick in the pants, and having been glad to have helped support the Ouya’s attempt to provide it. Having hopes that in time, the Ouya can provide exposure to indie game developers, add playability to Android games that could really use a solid controller and function as a valid over-the-top box for Netflix and other TV apps.



As a geek and freedom fighter, money was well-spent. If it was a parent on a shopping mission or hardcore gamer looking for a fix, though, the Ouya just doesn’t deliver. If you’re looking for anything resembling a AAA-title gaming experience, your $99 would be better spent on a used Xbox 360 or a new video card for your gaming computer.

Ouya has the potential to fix the bugs and round out its stable of apps and games to make a really viable complement to traditional consoles, but the company needs to move fast, before gamers decide to move on.

Ouya, the Android-based game console that received nearly $8.6 million from its Kickstarter campaign, is getting more money to put toward game development and its upcoming retail launch.

Bonnie Cha @allthingsd.com

The Los Angeles-based startup announced today that it has raised $15 million in new funding, led by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. Other investors include the Mayfield Fund, Nvidia, Shasta Ventures and Occam Partners.

In addition to the funding news, Ouya revealed that Kleiner Perkins general partner and former Electronic Arts executive Bing Gordon will join its board of directors, where he will advise the company on its retail strategy, product development and supporting the game developer community.

For those unfamiliar with Ouya, it’s a TV game console based on the Android operating system and features its own built-in store for downloading games and apps. Compared to other popular videogame systems like the Xbox and Sony PlayStation, Ouya costs a fraction of the price at $99, and features a more open platform that allows anyone to create a game for the system. Also, all games are free to try.

Ouya was created by videogame industry veteran Juile Uhrman, who didn’t even have an actual product when she took her idea to crowdfunding site Kickstarter, and received more than 63,000 backers and $8.6 million in pledges within a month.

In late March, the company shipped the first units to its Kickstarter backers, and in June, Ouya will be available at various retailers nationwide, including Target, Best Buy, GameStop and Amazon. Originally slated for release on June 4, that date has now been pushed back to June 25.

Though the $99 price tag is attractive, I have my doubts about its mass-market appeal. When I got a preview of Ouya in late March, I found many of the games to be retro-style arcade games or those you’d find on a smartphone or tablet, and I’m not sure that’s going to draw people looking for popular games like Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed.

Uhrman told me they are working with big studios to bring AAA titles to the platform, and has more than 12,000 developers registered to make an Ouya game.

But Ouya isn’t the only one playing the alternative console game. Companies like GameStick and Green Throttle also also taking a stab at the market. And software maker BlueStacks just announced its plans to bring an Android-powered game console called GamePop. Looks like it’s game on.

Super Meat Boy developer turned off by cost and hassle of console development

Consoles have become more trouble than they’re worth in the eyes of indie duo Team Meat.

The Super Meat Boy creators leapt to fame on Xbox Live Indie Games, but now duo Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes believes there are better options.

“We know the stress associated with going into console stuff,” Refenes told Eurogamer.

“When you look at the stress that comes with Steam and iOS and the Google Play store, you look at those and you look at which hoops you’d have to jump through to get on any one of the consoles, it’s like, ‘is this worth the time? Is this worth the headache?’”

This isn’t because publishing on Xbox has gotten harder, but due to the variety of new, more open options available to developers.

“A couple years ago it was definitely worth it because that was the outlet where people like Ed and I and Jon Blow could put their games because that was the only outlet,” Refenes explained.

“But that’s not the only outlet anymore and those seem to be the more difficult outlets than just contacting Steam and just putting your game on there and supporting it easily.”

Not only are these platforms harder to work with, they’re more expensive as well.

“The overhead cost of just developing for those consoles is insane,” continued Refenes.

“It costs zero dollars to develop on Steam if you already have a computer. When you look at PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo you have to buy thousand dollar dev kits and pay for certification and pay for testing and pay for localisation - you have to do all these things and at the end of the day it’s like, ‘I could have developed for other platforms and it would’ve been easier.’”

This overhead makes it risky for independents to get behind new platforms without some guarantee of their success.

“You have to take into consideration that when you’re independent, you don’t want to take the risk of jumping on a platform that you have no idea how it’s going to do until it’s already established,” said McMillen.

“When you look at WiiWare, when it bloomed when World of Goo came out it was like, ‘Holy s***! This is a great platform to develop for,’ and then it was like a gold rush and everybody was jumping on WiiWare.”

“What they should have done was wait a little longer to see if it would continue. Because then it just dropped and nobody cared.”

McMillen worries a similar situation could arise on any of the next generation consoles.

“Imagine if we got put in another situation like with Xbox where we were nailed down to this contract of semi-exclusivity and we had to jump through all these hoops and kill ourselves and then pay s***loads of money to get on a platform that’s not established yet and then it comes out and doesn’t do well - imagine that. That’s f***ing horrible.”

At the root of this is a worry that interest in the next generation of consoles just isn’t as high as it could be.

“I don’t feel there’s enough deviation from what games are currently out to what games are going to be out,” said Refenes.

“I don’t feel there’s a need to have anything more than what’s out right now.”

For Team Meat, that enthusasm has disapated with the rise of mobile gaming, and that’s where the studio is taking its next game: Mew-Genics.

“An iPad comes out and does a year’s worth of console sales in a weekend,” concluded Refenes.

“The people in the market to play games are more apt to grab an iPad or a tablet or a fancy phone because it’s more convenient.”

Studios could have to sell 20-to-30 million copies to break even if game budgets and team sizes increase

The industry should be wary not to back itself into a corner and make game development economically unviable on next generation consoles, BioWare’s director of art and animation has warned.

Speaking to OXM, Neil Thompson said that the last generation of hardware caught many developers off guard with the required skillsets to make games.

He stated that the industry cannot afford another ten-fold team increase in development costs and team sizes, as studios would likely have to sell 20-to-30 million copies of a triple-A title just to break even.

Thompson added however that although next generation consoles would be a big leap from the current hardware, it wouldn’t be as obvious graphically.

“I think the main thing is that the industry doesn’t get itself into a corner where it becomes economically unviable to make a game,” said Thompsom.

“The last technology iteration caught folks by surprise - especially the number of people you needed and the skillset jump that was required to do the work that people expected. In the last generation the perception was that it was going to be a ten times improvement over the previous generation.

“For the next generation there will be a big leap, but it won’t be as obvious. People will do things in a cleverer fashion - and I have to be careful here as there are non-disclosure agreements involved! I think they’ll be better prepared, shall we say - but we can’t see a ten-fold team increase again as the budgets would just be ridiculous. You’d have to sell 20-to-30 million copies before you broke even.”

The issue of development costs for next-gen consoles has been hotly debated over the last year, with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stating earlier this month that every console transition had seen an increase in costs, and the PS4 and next Xbox would be no different.

“This is my 22nd year doing this, and every single console transition we’ve seen an increase in development costs,” said Kotick.

“Over long periods of time it gets smoothed out, but I would say this is not a transition where that’s going to be an exception.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to take advantage of the unique abilities of new hardware and that requires new skills and investment in tools and technology and engines and so yes, that’s likely.”

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick however has previously stated that development costs would likely remain unchanged on new hardware, and claimed that the Grand Theft Auto publisher had in fact managed to tighten its expenditure. “We don’t have any reason to believe our development budgets will change significantly,” said Zelnick.

“If anything we have become – group-wide – much tighter in terms of how we spend our money. We can’t say specifically, but no we don’t expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products.”

From Linux Game News:

The topic of rising development costs for consoles has indeed been a given for some time. But the missing link in the equation is the alternative.
Where are developers looking for a viable platform?

Oddly enough, the PC gaming market is on the rise again. Linux of course seems to be the new un-tapped market for many to venture into. While other low cost consoles like the Ouya and Nvidia Shield make waves even with some development restrictions.
Low cost and less system resource intensive options seem to be where it’s at. Hence the growth in crowdfunding projects and the use of cross-platform game engines. And companies like Bioware are keeping the information under lock and key.

However, selling 20 - 30 million copies would mean considerable profit for Bioware if they took up other platforms. Even more interesting if Sony brought a PSN application to Linux and mixed it into a console environment. That in itself would put a whole new spin on the market.

Where is the ideal alternative for companies like Bioware if not in consoles?

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says every new console generation has resulted in higher development costs and this one will be no exception.

We may not know exactly what the next generation of game consoles has in store but we do know that it’s coming soon, and however it works out the big dog at Activision says the cost to make games for it is almost certainly going to go up.

“This is my twenty-second year doing this, and every single console transition we’ve seen an increase in development costs,” Kotick said in a post-earnings call to investors. “Over long periods of time it gets smoothed out, but I would say this is not a transition where that’s going to be an exception.”

“We’re going to have to figure out how to take advantage of the unique abilities of new hardware and that requires new skills and investment in tools and technology and engines and so yes, that’s likely,” he added.

Kotick’s comments have a bit of an ominous ring to them, in that they could be an early hint of higher game prices in the next console generation. Activision recently reported revenues of over $4.8 billion in 2012 so it’s not as though it can’t afford to eat some rising expenditures, but it didn’t get to where it is today by being a charity.

On the other hand, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick expects development costs will stay more or less flat into the next generation. “We don’t have any reason to believe our dvelopment budgets will change significantly,” he said. “If anything we have become - group-wide - much tighter in terms of how we spend our money. We can’t say specifically, but no, we don’t expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products.”

From Linux Game News:

With rising game development costs and company’s like Activision concerned. It appears that other platforms are apt to take the lead in stand-alone indie projects all the way to AAA game titles.

Certainly, if we were to look at the amicable Kickstarter campaigns boasting Linux support and the community influenced decisions to do so. There would seem to be a major change coming in the gaming industry.

Activision may be looking to put forth the effort to take their games beyond meer consoles and broaden the PC-based landscape.

What do you think?

GCW-Zero: Open Source Gaming Handheld runs Linux

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Only a few weeks ago, the so-called “Steam Box” was confirmed by Valve’s managing director Gabe Newell as hardware designed to play well in the living room with big screen TVs. Now, more details are being given by Valve engineer Ben Krasnow. Unsurprisingly, this new machine will be running some variant of Linux, and will be unveiled publicly later in the year at a large gaming event — most likely the Game Developers Conference (GDC) or the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

Updated: Valve is actually showing off a Steam Box prototype at CES.

German technology site Golem is reporting that Krasnow let this information loose to a crowd at the EHSM conference late last month in Berlin. None of this is shocking, but it’s a good sign that Valve is being relatively candid about the future of this product. While the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft are expected later this year, a dedicated box from Valve just might be what the stagnating console business needs.

The time between the original PlayStation and the PS2 was just over five years, and the gap between the PS2 and PS3 was even shorter. The 360 came out only four years after the original Xbox. The current consoles are long in the tooth — the Xbox 360 is now in its eighth year, and the PS3 isn’t far behind. This extremely long gap between console generations hasn’t been seen by the big players since the early 1990s. This allowed PC games to surpass the quality of console games by leaps and bounds. Even in a graphically hobbled state, most multi-platform games run poorly on the consoles. A game like Far Cry 3 runs beautifully and smoothly on a modern PC, but it stutters noticeably on the Xbox 360.



Valve has been focused heavily on promoting its Big Picture mode in Steam. When enabled, this fabulous 10-foot interface for the Steam storefront and library allows you to use an Xbox 360 controller to launch and play games quickly and easily. Valve has also been aggressively promoting games like The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Black Ops 2, all of which have strong support for gamepads. AAA PC games have been excellent at shipping with controller support in the last year or so, and we can expect Valve to push that even harder when the Steam Box comes to fruition. It’s clear now that this Big Picture UI was an important first step for Valve’s future.

We’ve seen Valve do amazing and disruptive things before. For all intents and purposes, digital distribution was completely nonexistent for big ticket games before Valve blew the doors off with Steam. Now, it’s common to see digital releases at the same time as boxed copies — even on consoles. In 2013, the idea of shipping bits on plastic discs seems silly. Valve has come out heavily against the direction Windows 8 is going — the closed, Microsoft-governed Windows Store — and it clearly intends on making Linux gaming a comparable consumer experience.

If it can pull off cheap, powerful hardware while persuading other game companies to jump ship to Linux, the Steam Box might serve to disrupt the console and PC gaming markets simultaneously. It’s no small task, but many longtime gamers are hoping Valve can do the impossible.

With Steam for Linux hitting open beta soon, make sure you’ve got your gaming box all set up- you could be one of the first of a new breed of “Console PC gamers”.

Thomaz de Oliveira dos Reis, a Linux developer, has arranged a script that will boot your machine straight into Steam’s “Big Picture” mode. It’s made for TVs and screens further away, so that makes it perfect for a console-like box under the living room telly.

This works in Ubuntu (which you can download and install from here). Just enter the following script in the Terminal window and log off:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thor27-gmail/steam-desktop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install steam-login

You can download the Steam Big Picture Login Screen from Softpedia.

Valve Prepping Custom PC Hardware To Compete With Next-Gen Game Consoles

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Christmas comes twice this year for those who signed up for a developers’ console in Ouya’s Kickstarter campaign.

Early birds get their hands on Ouya after December 28. (Credit: Ouya)

Let the gamers, Android nuts, and open-source geeks rejoice — the Ouya is shipping on time!

Well, at least the developers’ consoles are, that is. Ouya first garnered attention by raising more than $8.5 million on Kickstarter this summer to create an inexpensive, open-source, Android-based game system.

Early supporters of the crowdfunding campaign got first dibs on a finished Ouya for as little as $95, but those aren’t scheduled to ship until March. However, the hundreds of folks who ponied up $699 or more for a first-run, rooted developers’ system with early SDK access get to experience Christmas twice in the same week when their consoles ship on December 28.

If creators of the Ouya do fulfill their original commitment to ship the dev kits in December, they’ll deserve kudos. Plenty of other Kickstarter-funded projects have run into snags meeting original timelines and commitments — the Pebble watch is now months late on its original ship date and still working out production issues, for example.

Ouya points out that all consoles will actually be dev kits, but the late December batch is a special group that cost more to produce and give big early backers a first crack at working with the platform. The only catch for developers is that at least some part of the game play has to be available for free, be it a demo or the whole shebang.

Ouya is also working on its own ODK (Ouya development kit) that game designers will be able to access. At the same time, Ouya says it’s been busy optimizing Android Jelly Bean for gameplay on a large screen.

If Ouya takes off, 2013 could be a year in which a certain segment of the population gets even less exposure to the sun than in the past.

If you missed out on the first Ouya rush, there’s still a chance to get in on the ground floor noob level. Ouya is giving away 10 developers’ consoles next month.