John Romero's Doomy View On Android and Ouya

An anonymous reader writes "Romero is willing to give Ouya the benefit of the doubt, but he sees it filling a niche for neither gamers nor developers. 'I think it's cool that they're making a platform, but it's not really the answer that's coming from Apple about the next generation of consoles. Developers really want to invoke the spirit of the Apple II, Android isn't the operating system with which to do it,' Romero said. 'There are two platforms: [iOS] makes money [and] is still very programmable, like the Apple II, and then the other is Android, which is a piracy platform, and you're not doing anything new with it.'"

Comments

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD. Ouya will keep a tab on piracy by storing the titles in the cloud, similar to iTunes and most likely selling subscriptions instead of individual titles.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to program the Apple II. All you had to do was turn it on. You didn't have to buy a second, unrelated, $1000 computer just to write programs for it, nor pay $100 per year to the company that makes it. You didn't have to submit to sudden, arbitrary and anticompetitive censorship of the programs you could RUN ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER.

Apple may make many cool things, but lets not bullshit -- their devices are about neither creativity nor freedom -- they are about consumption, censorship, and control.

Re:Bullshit

[gl4ss]

And those are the walls that keep the pirates out. No not pirates, they will still make a profit. It's the brigands who just want an easy buck. The walls keep out the brigands and the freeloaders.

It's no different than a midieval town. No walls and you are an easy mark. Walls and it takes much more effort.

may as it be, but the comment is kinda strange coming from the dude who made his fame and money on a system that had bare metal access and loads of piracy - the dos pc. apple's ios doesn't offer that kind of access(you go outside the api's and the app isn't supposed to make it to the store) or freedom.

maybe the comment about not doing anything new with it is in regards of ouya which is true: it doesn't really offer anything a generic 100 dollar android pc doesn't, in that regard ouya reminds me of some branded "gaming pc"'s that some brands advertised as the next coming of jesus back in the day while they offered nothing the generic pc didn't(usually they just came bundled with say sound card ready installed, but you could order pretty much any pc that way anyways).

there's two things devs should consider usually: is it possible to port and is it possible to get enough users. that's how pc killed amiga etc. despite being much bitchier platform to code for and despite having the rampant home-copy piracy that consoles lacked. it just had such a large userbase and it offered things that weren't possible on competing platforms.

and may as it be but for warez is easier to find for ios than randomly chosen android sw that doesn't happen to be in some pack.

Re:Bullshit

[mwvdlee]

that's how pc killed amiga etc.

The PC didn't really kill the Amiga. Or the AtariST for that matter. Both pretty much committed suicide by failing to improve their hardware.

Re:Bullshit

[gl4ss]

oh fuck - I just realized that this is romero we're talking about and not carmack!

he's a fucking idiot and can't apparently design for shit nor code for shit. the games on which he was designer we're pretty much built around what the engine could or not do anyhow(keens would have been shit without carmacks engine and so would have wolf3d been and so would doom). he's lost the ball if he had any over fucking 20 years ago.

it totally makes sense that romero would say that android lacks apple II spirit and that iOS would have it because it's the total opposite. it totally makes sense too that he would be out of the loop of what's current gen(and what was last gen) in android tv boxes too so he's the last person you should ask for views on the whole matter.

"John Romero, who 25 years ago practically invented the first-person shooter genre with Wolfenstein 3D" is just total bullshit too.

Do NOT feed the TROLL!

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is nothing but FUD / misdirection / bullshit from a jackass that only cares about his own agendas... Shame on Slashdot for posting this flamebait.

John Romero?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that's cool, maybe next we can get Rico Suave's view on current music trends as well...

Re:I feel a great disturbance in the force...

[macshit]

No, no, it's Carmack that slashdot loves, 'cause he was the smart one.

Romero is the other guy, the one who was trying to look like Fabio.

Oh, John Romero...

[fredprado]

So speaks John Romero. He should know what he is talking about, things like making money and such, right? Oh wait. He was the guy who managed to bankrupt his company and failed to deliver several games for which he had received money in advance, and the games he did delivery were failures.

He also bought offices with marble floors, opening ceilings and all kinds of ostentation whilst trying his very best to destroy his company.

The only thing he did right in his life was trusting John Carmack in the beginning.

Re:Windows is a piracy platform too

[Anonymous Coward]

a 93% market share?

Re:Piracy is not the problem - incumbency and bugs

[PsychoSlashDot]

Piracy is not as big a problem as some devs are making it out to be.

I agree. The real "problem" is that (many) developers just don't get it that their fart app really isn't worth $.99 to most people. Clue: your weather widget... it's a fart app. Your uber-mega-clock? It's a fart app. Battery Gauge Max++ Professional Edition is... a fart app. If you really dig on Google Play, you're going to see thousands of "apps" almost all of which are just superfluous fluff. Even most of the games are roughly equivalent to the freeware of the Windows platform circa 1990.

Developers... get this: unless you're making either a top-tier game or a truly powerful app like Documents to Go or Repligo PDF Reader, you're making crap we don't need. Some of your fart apps we might kinda-sorta want, a little bit, maybe. And sometimes someone of us might bother with your token microtransactions because we're bored. But don't think counting on that income is a valid business plan. It's not. There are five other stock-ticker apps out there that are actually free instead of almost-but-not-quite-free. Sure, maybe yours comes with a blue icon and sure, maybe that's enough motivation for someone to pirate yours instead of using one of the free ones with green icons, but don't kid yourself... you didn't get pirated because Android blah blah platform for piracy blah blah. No. You got pirated because your product really, truly isn't worth $.99 (With the notable exceptions mentioned earlier.)