The future of the Android-powered Ouya apparently lies with non-Ouya hardware.
If you had asked me this morning what Ouya is, I’d have told you it’s a game console built around Google’s Android operating system. And I’d have been wrong. Speaking with [a] list daily, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman described it as an “ecosystem” and said that the plan now is to expand it to hardware built by other manufacturers.
“One thing you’ll start to see is Ouya on other people’s devices,” she said. “For us, we’ll always have a minimum set of standards so the games will work well on our device as well as others. It’s the hardware plus an ecosystem. If you think about the traditional game consoles, they’re custom hardware and custom chips. To get those games, you have to buy a box for hundreds of dollars. We’ve always wanted to open that up. We started with a $99 box, but we always wanted to create a console platform that can live on other people’s devices.”
Uhrman said the software is now at the point where it’s ready to go onto other hardware, and the company has already had “conversations” about it at CES. “The takeup was so great that we’re really jumping into the strategy with both feet this year,” she added.
Unlike mainstream consoles, the Ouya is based on a hardware standard that evolves at a very rapid pace. Even before it hit the retail market last year it was easily outmuscled by other devices including numerous mobile phones, and it currently ranks 310th in Futuremark’s most recent ranking of Android devices. That’s a tough market to keep up with.
“We will always have an Ouya reference device. Think of it similar to the Kindle strategy, or Google’s Android itself,” Uhrman said. “Ouya is more than just that reference device, it’s an ecosystem that really can live on other people’s devices.”
Source: [a] list daily
