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Coming in March 2013 the Ouya games console uses simple but effective hardware and runs on Android OS. The developers encourage hackers to explore their console which will cost just $99. I think this is an interesting concept and is one of the reasons why I don't see any major problems for Google going forward. In the summer of 2012 I read some articles that Google was in trouble and might go the way of IBM (or whoever it was). At the same time Apple was making new highs in the stock market and it would seem that some irrational exuberance was creeping in. I have a bias towards Google/ Android as I think they develop products that are closer to my ideals: open platform, cheap for developers, cheap for users, on top of a solid platform. While I haven't been much of a computer gamer for years I am quite excited to see what happens with Ouya.

The project was crowdfunded through Kickstarter and made its target of $950k in just 8 hours, the last I checked it was at $8.5m of funding. The console is already being sold on pre-order with one controller at $109 ($10 a controller?). A lot of the strength of this project is that it uses Android which is evolving well as a mobile OS. I've always preferred Android over iOS, partly as a Google vs Apple thing but also, because it seemed that Android would be simpler to develop for: something which is essentially Java (Android), the largest user-base OS, versus a semi-proprietary OS with a limited user-base. Android works on many platforms, with different styles to suit different preferences, iOS essentially works on 1 type of platform (2 if we include iPad?).

The ethos behind Android is to make it accessible to as many people as possible while iOS is the preserve of certain luxury goods. I think this makes Android an obvious choice for the developers of Ouya: they save a vast amount of time and money as their operating system already exists AND it will be updated in the future. It seems that all they need to do is find off-the-shelf hardware, which is already well tested, again saving time and money, and put that into a flashy appealing box. Voilà, done.

The key is simplicity. The games ought to be cheap (in many cases free) and I think this will appeal to the hacker community in the same way that the Raspberry PI does. I think we will see greater integration between Android computing devices and television, perhaps to the extent that the idea of a TV becomes extinct. Internet connections and microprocessors are all-pervading, it is simple now to plug usb sticks into TVs that they are one step away from being a computer. Will this be a disruptive technology? Some are already guessing so, it is much cheaper than its console rivals and provides a blueprint for realising a lower barrier-to-entry for similar products in the future. It is likely to be a matter of time before someone releases an upgrade mod for processing power or releases a more powerful product that allows for higher-end games. I think it is a matter of when rather than if.

I'm now wondering how long it will be until they release a Ouya 2 (with improved hardware, will be interesting to see what the product cycle is) and who will be their first competitor in the mobile OS console market. I'm naively assuming that games can be easily ported from mobile devices to the Ouya as well. If Angry Birds can run on your phone, any tablet and your desktop computer then I'm sure it can run on the Ouya too.