Hrm, I wonder if, outside of gaming, this thing could make for a great replacement to my Acer Revo. Android has apps that can interface with Windows networks and play back practically any video of any format, right?
Damn that was funded fast.
I think the main innovation here is will be the open platform. There are so many awesome things happening in the PC and tablet space because anyone can put out a game. No barriers at all. But few people have HTPCs and for many people gaming is using a controller on a tv. With this you could be playing the next Minecraft or Draw Something on tv with a controller and not 3 years later when it was finally ported to Xbox or whatever.
I guess hardware wise it will be way better than the wii, still not up to current gen standards, but it might be close enough that they could play many of the same games. I think Minecraft might be pushing it, but I guess it does have more ram than the 360 and that can run it…
Edit: Holy crap this thing is going SO fast. From the time when I looked it maybe 30 minutes ago to now it’s up almost 100k. I hope these guys know what they are doing. This may be the project that kills kickstarter if they fall on their face.
If I were Google I’d openly partner or outright purchase the company right now. They’ve tapped into something.
I already had thought it was like a tablet or smartphone without the expensive display, but I didn’t thought in the minituarization (or lack of) and that, in fact, in 2013 a Tegra3 will be cheaper.
This is a conceptually nice device, but I have a hard time seeing it getting much traction from developers – and it apparently can’t run apps from Google Play, so no Netflix/Hulu etc. (and no IR port to control it with a remote control if you could).
This strikes me as the sort of thing that would be a legitimately big deal if Google were behind it, and were doing the sort of stuff it’s doing with the Q; but as a thing from a no-name startup, it’s just an interesting curiosity.
It has bluetooth, couldn’t a BT remote be made, like the one the PS3 has?
Pretty much, yeah.
And this is why I jumped on board so fast. Sure, a $100 gaming console is cool. But I already have an Xbox and a PC (hooked up to my living room TV, no less), so I don’t need another machine to do all the same stuff. But the openness and flexibility of Android, from a company that PROMOTES hacking and begs for the dev community to come out in full-force and see what they can do…I foresee a LOT of cool development taking place here, even outside the games. I hope they can get Netflix on board as being built-in at launch. I’m sure it’ll get hacked on easily enough, but I’d love to see that be one of the features on the side of the box.
Regardless…I’ve seen what the Android community has overcome WITH obstacles (locked bootloaders, custom ROMs voiding warranties, etc.) and am REALLY psyched to see what they do with a machine whose manufacturer so freely invites them to come play!
Google Play has been hacked onto many devices that didn’t launch with it, and Netflix is fairly trivial to get onto any Android-based device.
I don’t see why not. Android phones have been paired with Wiimotes via Bluetooth, so I’m sure this is a possibility.
Any mention of a gyroscope and accelerometer in the controller? The Nexus 7, which this is basically the same as, has them as does pretty much every other recent phone and tablet.
Seems like you’d need it to avoid excluding a huge swath of games.
There’s a difference, though, between something that you can hack up, and something that’s actually intended.
If this were a Google device that they were promoting seriously, for instance, you could expect a bunch of major apps – Netflix, obviously, but others, too – to have a UI designed for this form factor, operated with a controller (or possibly a separate phone/tablet, like the Q) with a “ten foot” UI.
But as a thing that can be hacked up to run Android apps, it’ll be running a phone app on your TV, and you’ll have to control something designed for touch with an awkward controller-driven mouse cursor (I assume), and it’ll just never be as good as something purpose-built.
I mean, it’s only $99, and I can certainly imagine it having some fun niche uses, and it’s certainly more sensical than the Nexus Q, but.
The more I think about this thing, the more promising it seems to be. I mean, you can basically have a full HTPC that can play any sort of media hooked up to your PC for $100, without AppleTV’s restrictions, and it has a nice bit of potential for gaming too. Even if the gaming part of it completely fails, it would be an awesome thing to have if only for the hackability and capability for every other type of media.
The gold rush to sell TV attached Android devices on Kickstarter before the market is flooded by generic Chinese stuff is pretty weird. This thing offers sub PS Vita performance and will be competing with $150 360s and PS3s by the time it is actually delivered. If you just want to hack or emulate you’ll be able to by a tiny hdmi stick with stock Android 4.0, dual cores and a faster Mali or SGX gpu in a few months for less than $50.
Can anyone push out a Vita game like you can on PC/Android/IOS?
I can think of tons iPad games that I purchased for a dollar or two each, or were free, that it’d be a blast to play on a big TV with a nice controller. The huge market of games and the crazy prices is what does it for me.
Are there really faster GPUs coming out for that cheap though? Is going Tegra a mistake?
When PS Mobile launches, yes. And yes, the Tegra GPUs are really bad.
I think trying to get iOS games on the TV is just misguided. No one wants Angry Birds on their TV. They want to play Angry Birds while they watch TV. Some of the cool iOS platformers would be better with buttons but things like Super Meat Boy and Spelunky are even better.
Tegra underperforms versus the new Samsung Exynos quad-cores with Mali 400-series chips, underperforms vs. the GPU in the iPhone 4S, and barely keeps pace with the dual-core S4 Krait with a shitty old Adreno 225 GPU.
nVidia is still new to this arena and have a lot of catching up to do. Hell, the Tegra 2 lacked the NEON instruction set used in a lot of video encoding work on Android. Pretty basic error.
To put that another way: There is precisely one non-Apple SoC that performs noticeably better than Tegra 3, and it’s not available on any device in the US.
I pine for real controls in almost everything I play on ios. Even for stuff that works great with touch: roguelikes, card games, 2d shooters like Space Miner, pinball – I still wish I was using physical controls.
Spelunky is why this could be better than Xbox and PS3. It was out 4 years ago on PC where there are no barriers. Future undiscovered Spelunky can come out on PC and an open console at the same time, as well as any mobile platforms where the controls work.
I feel like Google should be ones the ones trying something like this rather than the ill fated Google TV. Sell it at cost and have it feed directly off of Google Play. It can still do a lot of what the Google TV does anyway but you aren’t buying it just for that. Package it with a a couple of great Android games. Dungeon Defenders would be my pic. Looks great on Android but horrible to play with the touchscreen IMO.
Looks like the iPad 2 and 3, and the Vita, are 2 to 3 times faster:
Nexus 7 GL benchmarks:
Though not having the same power constraints should let them clock their Tegra higher and reduce that gap somewhat.
No idea on the cost difference though. I do feel like they need to hit 100 bucks. If they had to bump up a single hardware spec I’d make sure they have gyroscopes in the controller before upping the GPU.
Some interesting comments from an nVidia dev’s personal blog on why going Linux would be a lot more efficient than Android: http://timothylottes.blogspot.com/2012/07/on-ouya-console.html
There are shitty Chinese tablets with the Mali 400 GPU selling for ~$150 right now. Plus the Apple chips. Plus the Vita chip. Point is, there are a number of readily available ARM SoCs that use much better GPUs which they could have chosen. They probably went with Tegra 3 because nVidia has been forced by that weakness to slash their prices.
If it’s say £70 then I’d go for it, but I expect £100 at least. (Direct shipping is always extortionate)
grumbles
Anyway - I see this very much in the same vein as the old GP32/GP2X, but this time a living room version. The one thing I’m not impressed by is the single USB port. I’d like 2, for a keyboard/mouse.
(Yes, thinking productivity. It’d be good for kids…)