Discount Gaming

Green Throttle Gaming is this new service you can get for free on your Android or iPhone devices.  You basically can purchase a controller from them, and play games on your TV via HDMI out or on your device itself.  And it has a list of games that support the controller that you can try and buy.

Ouya is the new $99 Android based game console that comes with a controller with a touch pad on it.  About the size of a Rubik's cube and has 7,000 signed up developers including big names like Square Enix who are putting a version of Final Fantasy on it.

Game Stick, is a similar device that is a controller with a USB stick that connects to a TV and lets you play Android games developed for it.

There is also Project Shield, which is Nvidia's playable controller with screen, Steam Box which I'm sure everyone knows what that is, 

The Esefere project however failed miserably - http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/esfere-android-video-game-console...

There are others that are sure to surface and gain traction as well, offering new features and getting funding.

The question really is, will this stuff work?  No question that as hardware on Android gets better, the games will take use of them and become better as well.  But so long as the major consoles offer better features, is there really a need or room for a micro console?

I'm not convinced.  While I am going to end up with these things as part of my gaming collection, I overall don't think they'll succeed.  Perhaps Ouya, which seems to have the best chance of getting somewhere may offer up a cheap way to game, I'm not sure anyone would bother.

What say you?

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Permalink Reply by Payden on March 15, 2013 at 1:20pm

It all depends who the marketing directs their focus to. If it's the casual normal gamers, all these things could easily fail. If it's the type of people who like to learn how to use new things but also want to save money on gaming, it could easily succeed. 

Yes, there can be room for micro-consoles if they find that room and occupy it, but if they try to compete with the big names, they likely will fail. 

They could probably steal some people away from all the casuals that bought and made the Wii so successful, but that'd probably be about it.

Some people who go budget from the PC could like these micro-consoles if they could use PC peripherals with them. Or just so they could save money and didn't want to buy into the current major consoles.

Permalink Reply by Hawksprite on March 19, 2013 at 12:07pm

I just don't see it working out either.  It seems like such a cliche market, the phone games.  And they really want to push this whole move your phone to the TV but to be honest most of these games are designed to work at a max resolution of around like 1280 by 720 (Or something very similar).  I can't imagine them just instantly upscaleing to a full 1920 by 1080 tv without artifacts   And at that point most people would rather play the phones games in the browser as most of the games are built by indie developers the programs themselves have low requirements and can be easily ported to other systems.

I'll be surprised if it takes off, I really think this is just a phase that's already starting to die.

Permalink Reply by Robert B on April 4, 2013 at 7:05pm
The important thing they will do is add some downward pricing pressure to the big guys.

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