Were you aware that there was some serious disruption at the core of big corporate gaming? Earlier today, the OUYA video game console project launched. Less than 24 hours later, they have raised over $2,000,000 (over double their goal) making it the eighth Kickstarter project to reach over a million bucks and gave it the biggest first day for a Kickstarter project ever. What kind of project could get this kind of cash this quickly? A pretty darn spectacular one, that’s what.
The OUYA (pronounced OOO-Yah) is a supremely powerful, $99 dollar, HD, hacker friendly, Android based video game console that handles exclusively free-to-play games and is built with indie developers in mind. The controller is shiny with the standard selection of buttons (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button) and has a very special touch pad in the center (a touch screen without the screen). I would love to talk more about it, but you are better off just reading the Kickstarter page and watching the project video yourself.
Let me just say though what a game changer this could be. What the OUYA people were looking for was a sign from the gamers, from the indie developers, that change was needed and change was due. There is no question that they got the answer they were looking for – and in just a few short hours. I look forward to seeing the dollar number at the end of this Kickstarter project. I’m sure execs from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are currently paying close attention and shaking in their boots.
Releasing the same day as the Tiny Wings sequel, Amazing Alex (the new game created by the Angry Birds masterminds) is releasing July 12th on iOS. Watch the launch trailer above.
In addition to coming to the Wii U, Scribblenauts Unlimited will also be making it’s way to the 3DS this holiday season. It seems offer a lot of fun, new stuff including Street Pass functionality for getting new answers to puzzles, 20+ hours of level gameplay, and, of course, 3D visuals. Read all about it here.
This cracked me up today. The following comments come from Shigeru Miyamoto.
“There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways. Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it’s one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first. I mean, obviously I want to be the one creating the most convincing, surprising game ideas.
In particular the control scheme is excellent. When you analyze it, the controls are actually quite fuzzy in terms of the way that it works. It takes a little while to get used to the controls, I think, but once you’ve mastered them, you have a lot of precision. To make it the interface and controls work that well and intuitively… well, I think a lot of work went into getting that right.
Obviously, if the developer had created the game for Nintendo DS the controls would have been even better, but what can you do?”
rumphy 