Ouya – which recently began shipping its Android-powered console to early Kickstarter backers – says it has signed on up to 10,000 game developers.
“I think a lot of the developers have appropriately approached this early phase in getting their dev kits with just playing around and experimenting with the platform,” Ouya exec Kellee Santiago told GameIndustry.biz.
“So what you see on the store today are a number of sort of raw experiments, which I think is really cool that you can have a console that has such raw material on it, but we are also seeing more just genuinely fun and polished experiences. Partnerships with larger developers and publishers will be coming up in the next few months.”
Santiago also addressed criticism of the console, which has thus far centered on hardware specs and benchmark scores, as the Tegra 3 SoC which drives the system is already considered last-gen tech. Nevertheless, says Santiago, Ouya is focused on the overall gameplay experience, rather than just polygons and pure eye candy.
“I think it’s fundamentally about experiences the developers make. What are the quality of the experiences themselves? Our goal at Ouya is to empower developers to provide entertaining experiences for the living room.
“[Yes], critics have their job but what I can say is Ouya is a small company and we’re very nimble and what’s been encouraging about the criticism and the feedback so far is that it’s all stuff we’re aware of and we’re working on. It’s great to hear it because we are still in this preview period and we continue to iterate and improve upon the console in a way that no other company can. For our gamers and developers that creates a very supportive ecosystem for them,” she added.
As TG Daily previously reported, the Ouya console runs Android Jelly Bean (4.1-4.2) and is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. Additional specs include 8 GB internal flash memory, 1 GB RAM, HDMI (1080p), Nvidia ULP GeForce GPU, USB 2, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth LE 4.0, Ethernet port and a wireless controller.
It should be noted that Ouya is already prepping an updated version of the console, with Uhrman going so far as to say a new iteration of the system will be available each and every year with as much mobile processing power as possible under the hood.
“If we could do it for less than $99, we would. Our strategy is very much similar to the mobile strategy. There will be a new Ouya every year. There will be an Ouya 2 and an Ouya 3,” Uhrman said back in February.
“We’ll take advantage of faster, better processors, take advantage of prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will.”
