Expect a new OUYA every year
posted:
2/7/2013 7:09:00 AM
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OUYA
Here's something that's sure going to rustle some feathers. Julie Uhrma, CEO of OUYA, spoke at DICE and said that they are going to follow the mobile model and release a new OUYA every year. They are going to leverage the falling prices in the mobile space to deliver a new console on an annual basis.
Initial gut reaction from me and and lot of folks is that this model just doesn't seem fitted for a home entertainment space. Yes, the OUYA is built using mobile components, but you're pushing it as a home console and with that comes certain expectations from the public.
After stewing it over for a little bit, the pricing is vastly different from a regular console. Games are going to be much, much less and the initial investment is less than consoles today. You'll get a lot of functionality out of the box that you pay for on a yearly basis with the Xbox 360 such as Netflix. So, there could be a possibility that if you do want to upgrade every year, the cost of ownership will still be less than Microsoft or Sony's console when you factor in various pricing options.
But, games aren't going to look nearly as good because of the mobile architecture and that's one knock against these mobile console systems. Some will argue there are plenty of folks that upgrade their iPad's yearly and phones yearly. That's true and I can see where OUYA's coming at in that sense.
For me, it's still hard to wrap my head around seeing a yearly upgrade though. Games will be backwards compatible, of course, but how long will it be before we see certain games work only on certain OUYA models? Then again, we might get into a PC like state where games just work with various features turned on or off based on the OUYA version you have.
The OUYA's coming out in March so we haven't even gotten the first ones in consumer hands yet (mostly devs have it now) to know if this product is going to be viable. The news of future versions already in place, I wonder how this will affect the sales of the OUYA's initial entry into the market.
Thanks Engadget.
Initial gut reaction from me and and lot of folks is that this model just doesn't seem fitted for a home entertainment space. Yes, the OUYA is built using mobile components, but you're pushing it as a home console and with that comes certain expectations from the public.
After stewing it over for a little bit, the pricing is vastly different from a regular console. Games are going to be much, much less and the initial investment is less than consoles today. You'll get a lot of functionality out of the box that you pay for on a yearly basis with the Xbox 360 such as Netflix. So, there could be a possibility that if you do want to upgrade every year, the cost of ownership will still be less than Microsoft or Sony's console when you factor in various pricing options.
But, games aren't going to look nearly as good because of the mobile architecture and that's one knock against these mobile console systems. Some will argue there are plenty of folks that upgrade their iPad's yearly and phones yearly. That's true and I can see where OUYA's coming at in that sense.
For me, it's still hard to wrap my head around seeing a yearly upgrade though. Games will be backwards compatible, of course, but how long will it be before we see certain games work only on certain OUYA models? Then again, we might get into a PC like state where games just work with various features turned on or off based on the OUYA version you have.
The OUYA's coming out in March so we haven't even gotten the first ones in consumer hands yet (mostly devs have it now) to know if this product is going to be viable. The news of future versions already in place, I wonder how this will affect the sales of the OUYA's initial entry into the market.
Thanks Engadget.
