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Ouya Dropping 'Free-to-Play' Requirement
itwbennett writes: "One of the Ouya micro-consoles's selling points has been that you can sample every game for free. That requirement is going away soon. In a recent blog post, Ouya's Bob Mills said, 'In the coming weeks, we're going to let devs choose if they want to charge up front for their games. Now they'll be able to choose between a free-to-try or paid model.' Good news for developers, perhaps not as good for customers. 'Maybe this new policy will attract new developers that can offer something compelling enough to be a system seller,' writes blogger Peter Smith."
They are a barely alive gaming platform and they are starting remove features they were built upon...
Not smart.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sounds like a desperate attempt to be at all appealing to developers, it is far too late in the game to work though.
When I was one of the first few hundred to sign up for their kickstarter and then received my unit well after I could have purchased it for the same price at Best Buy, I was done.
Then, when it took them another 3-4 weeks to get me my other controller, I sold it on the Internet like I did the Ouya and first controller.
I've heard nothing but complaints about it, and now they're removing one of the only promises they've actually kept to this point.
What a way to blow through millions of dollars. It'll be dead in a year. And I say good riddance.
Speaking from personal experience, "Free to play" games generally are not even close to free. It's pay to play, rent your EXISTING equipment, pay to win, pay for upgrades, the list goes on. So for me this makes the platform more appealing.
I like my games to be 1 transaction (The purchase) and it's done. Expansion packs are okay too.
Really? Usually business plans that bad die quicker.
The best they can hope for is to become a darling of the libre crowd. As a market, they're done.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
The reviews for the Ouya are split between "5 stars: It runs emulators and XBMC really well" and "1 star: It sucks for anything else".
The market has already spoken. They don't want a cheap console where they have to pay for games.
Ouya: the bitcoin of the console world.
Now they'll be able to choose between a free-to-try or paid model.' Good news for developers, perhaps not as good for customers.
Customers?
Like, all of both of them?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Besides the clunky controller, and the chicken and the egg problem of no developers...
The main problem with the OUYA is that it does nothing you can't get from a cell phone plugged into a TV with bluetoothed controllers.
Everyone has a cell phone, so the OUYA just seems redundant.
God spoke to me
The big problem with the Ouya is that there is no really good exclusive out there to show people what the console can really be pushed to do. So you have a lot of half-hearted ports from other platforms, pretty much limiting the sales of the product to people who haven't purchased any recent computer, game console, phone or tablet (very few indeed).
Frankly, Ouya needs to pick a product that is distinctly their market - nurture and help it be THE GAME on the Ouya to own, a reason to buy the console and controllers. Really showcasing what the system can do with the hardware its got will bring developers looking to 'one-up' that product and it really would have a shot.
Right now - its a no-mans land of retreads and badly written indie games. And I can say this as someone looking to release a product on the Ouya.
Its probably because devs couldn't be bothered to integrate with their payment APIs - especially for such a small platform. Much easier to just publish with a price. They can then just try out the same APK they put in Google Play.
I think its a smart move for the platform, as otherwise they simply don't get anything posted (which also is not good for the consumer - or them!)
What's Ouya, and why should I care?
What this will do is attract the predatory developers that make good photoshops but crappy games. So now, as a customer, you can get ripped off and fleeced. ...but it sounds like if you bought a Ouya then that already happened. Oh well.
I haven't heard anything out of Ouya to make me believe anything other than that they were in the right place at the right time. But they don't seem to have the right stuff (hardware or software) so they'll be a footnote soon.
(Major corporations with unlimited in-house resources, especially when compared to Ouya, have launched game consoles with no killer app and those have crashed and burned too. See: Atari 5200.)
They can't succeed just because they really want to (everyone who does anything really wants to succeed) or that others really want them to succeed (there's lots of that too). They already did the "give us money and we'll make all your gaming dreams come true" thing.
14 minutes 59 seconds and . . . boom.
ODK IAP supports two kinds of in-app purchases, which lead to very different free-to-play designs. Entitlements This represents the shareware/expansion model: buy a feature once for a particular e-mail address and keep it. For example, Id Software could choose to put Doom in the store, with "Knee-Deep in the Dead" free. It would have an entitlement called "Ultimate Doom" containing "The Shores of Hell", "Inferno", and "Thy Flesh Consumed". It would have a second entitlement called "Doom II". Consumables These can be purchased more than once. The bad reputation of free-to-play that you mention comes from abuse of consumables in game design, such as "energy" mechanics on even the smallest actions designed to induce the player to pay to override multi-hour waits.
One of the ways of filtering out the dross in the app stores is to tell the search to only list games with a selling price.
How do economists model consumer preference for higher-priced goods? "Veblen goods" because they're more closely associated with conspicuous consumption, not price as a signal of quality. Does it have more to do with the common law of business balance?
OUYA supported sideloading last time I checked. Who has managed to get F-Droid working on an OUYA console? Should I try it tonight and tell you whether it worked?
My recent experience with the Mac App store (if a newer version won't work on your hardware, you're SOL and can't get older versions that do work) has burned me enough not to trust a model where I don't take delivery of a physical copy with the means to activate it without the intervention of third parties. I run the windoze that comes on my laptop until I decide on a HDD upgrade, then run Debian or UbuntuStudio. I'm beginning the painful process of weaning myself off ShinyJuicyAppleses.
With this console again it just goes to show that business needs trump claims and promises to consumers. You get what you pay for, and anything else is a bonus that lasts as long as it lasts. Mr Caveat X. Emptor is very much alive and kicking.
John_Chalisque
The main problem with the OUYA is that it does nothing you can't get from a cell phone plugged into a TV with bluetoothed controllers.
It's cheaper than buying a new unlocked Android phone with HDMI out (which not all of them have) and buying such a Bluetooth controller. Or are you assuming that people already carry an Android phone with HDMI out? Besides, does Google Play Store yet support searching for games that support a Bluetooth controller? Support for the OUYA controller is a given on the OUYA store. Games on Google Play Store are more likely to support the touch screen and leave Bluetooth controllers as an afterthought.
Everyone has a cell phone
I have a cell phone, but it's not one that runs Android. I can't seem to figure out how to get any games for my Audiovox 8610 on Virgin Mobile other than the blackjack game and the Hansel and Gretel-themed Columns clone called Magic Hexa that came with it.
Towerfall is probably it's best known game. It made Ars Technica's top 10 of 2013 and has a sequel in the works for OUYA, PS4 and PC.
But is this sequel coming to PS4 in hopes that people will confuse Towerfall with Titanfall?
Is integrating with ODK IAP really harder than integrating with Google Play in-app billing?
they didn't get it out fast enough to be eclipsed by MadCatz providing a system that's usable with the Play store and can run games right straight out of that
I thought games in Google Play Store were expected to have been optimized for touch screen control, not a directional control and discrete buttons. This sort of rules out genres that really need a directional control and discrete buttons, such as platformers and fighting games. When did this change?
Often, what is a "requirement" from the point of view of a developer is a "feature" from the point of view of the user and vice versa.
Mine's been collecting dust on the shelf for one year now. When they remove the need to hand a creditcardnumber to boot it up, I shall try it further.:)
It will possibly attract few developers who previously felt that the free-to-play rule didn't fit their business model. Probably very few will switch from free-to-play. Those who wanted to most likely weren't developing for the Ouya in the first place.
The main problem with the OUYA
Yep, I do test some of my Android stuff with bluetooth gamepads and TVs, so that part of porting to OUYA isn't a big deal. The primary problems I had with OUYA development be two fold:
0. Free to play means taking the time to create a demo version, and the effort is barely worth it because:
1. Cheap games are impulse purchases. Once curiosity is sated by the demo, the drive to purchase is gone.
For my wares, screenshots and videos drive hype and result in sales; Demos largely do not, and frequently decrease sales instead. "Oh, that was fun, I'll buy it later, lemme try this other demo first", lather, rinse, repeat, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 pennies. Even when demos do lead to sales it is insanely difficult to create a good demo because you're trying to demonstrate enough of the gameplay to leave the player with a satisfying grasp of what the game is without including enough content to leave the player satisfied with just the demo.
This is "big" news, relatively speaking, for (prospective) OUYA devs. Allowing pay-up-front-once may convince me to port to OUYA, given that it's the only sales method I use. I've seen much of the same sentiment among other indie game devs. Personally, I'm still hesitant because when I factor in time and cost to play test & debug a version just for OUYA, the cost/benefit ratio drops back to at or below even. I'll have to test after cutting down on geometry details & texture res because phones out-pace OUYA in power; For for phones/tablets I can expect folks to upgrade so I don't test on multiple hardware power "tiers", I just pick the minimal requirement for a smooth game. Factoring in creation of a demo just for OUYA, and what that means for sales, eliminated it as an option but now I might take the risk.
Notice that I do not concern myself with in-app purchases; While that is how one deploys a demo version on OUYA (a one time IAP unlockable), a continuous micro-transaction model is not a part of my game mechanic vocabulary, and never will be. If you want to pay-to-win parts of my games, then those spots are not monetization opportunities, they are where I've failed as a game designer. Banking heavily on that pay-to-win model (since demos don't drive sales), really irked me about OUYA -- it means I'd have to design a game around its monetization, ugh, no. If games are to be artforms we have to treat them that way -- That means being born without an auth-server death sentence, hence without IAP even if it's a one time unlockable.
I also find it frustrating that a console claiming to be giving developers more freedom even had the restriction of free-to-play only in the first place which no other platform had. That OUYA also claims to be giving players more choice while they require them to hand over a credit card to even use the device is also really messed up considering the games were all "free to try". Trying to leverage "casual" gamer marketing from a traditionally "hard-core" gamer console space is also a strategic failure, IMO. Protip: "Hard core" gamers are the prime spenders on "casual" games too... So the most paying demographic already has a console, they likely also already have a PC, and phone / tablet. I can't see casuals picking the vastly underpowered OUYA just for casual-tier TV games when they can get far more powerful and seamless experience with an Xbox360 for around the same price, or likely already need/have a phone, and with these options won't have to trust kids with a credit card number just for them to play games.
I agree that nearly anyone who would buy an OUYA has a cellphone and they can probably hook it up to their TVs, but no one wants to jump up and yank wires from their phone in the middle of a game to take a call... For this reason I don't think wireless video transmission is quite the answer either. Smart TVs aren't the answer because TVs are expensive and you'll want to upgrade hardware long before the screen nee
As a customer I'm tired of all these "free to play" games that are full of marketing gimmicks. I just wanted plants vz zombies 2... not a fucking advertisement to upgrade or buy shit every time I finished a level.
I think in the end, we should really think about what we support. I read the whole project page, it seemed to me like just another great "portable" game system. We had the little hand-held gaming systems that had all these games loaded, great gimmick. It was just that, a "gimmick"....so in the end, I think we need to forget our inventor, american spirit. this whole crowdsourcing thing is nothing but a waste of money. The only thing we hear is how all the projects are either a failure or a not what we "want'. This free to "share" requirement is something to not worry about.We just need to buy our Xbox One or Playstation 4 and quit spending needless money on anything that has not been stamped "big business". Nuff said.