Google And Apple May Bring Us A Console War We Didn't See Coming

&quot;It’s hard to imagine Google and Apple not delivering a product with ten thousand percent more refinement, so it may be the case the Ouya won’t be long for this world.&quot;<p>L O fucking L. Especially in Google&#x27;s case, their MO is to always throw the half-baked product out onto market, call it &quot;beta&quot; for 5 years, and make it good eventually. That&#x27;s not bad in itself, but the author has no idea what they&#x27;re talking about. Apple will start with a small, lacking-functionality (&quot;on purpose&quot;) product, have it be incredibly closed, and polish it up for the second release (if any). Judging by their history with Apple TV, I wouldn&#x27;t count on a homerun here either.<p>Did Forbes hire a 12-year-old fanboy to write this?

Well first I would argue that we did see this coming: AAA games make money but so do casual and free-to-play games. Wii established the precedent, and follow on devices such as the Ouya expand the market for console devices for casual games. Also, Roku 2 shipped a version with a game remote and Angry Birds.<p>My concern is that it is too early for Google to introduce an Android gaming console, without establishing a standard for games to be developed against. The first Ouya&#x27;s have sold out (to the chagrin of the presale buyers), but customers don&#x27;t need the confusion of multiple incompatible consoles at this stage. Having a different market application is probably fine, but the developers need to be able to publish to multiple markets and still customize the games for the for the console they are targeting.<p>I believe that actions taken by Google at this stage could prevent Android gaming consoles from becoming established, and they should be willing to defer to the first mover, Ouya, in order to build an economy of compatible Android gaming consoles later.

Um, if Apple makes apps available for the Apple TV and can nail the user experience, they might really have something. A $100 Apple TV with $1-5 games and a lot of free to play would be such a better deal for most consumers than the $500 consoles with $60-70 games.<p>Also, there is a window for a Steam box to do well too.<p>OUYA might not be getting rave reviews now, but I think it&#x27;s going to grow into an interesting niche for sure.

I think it is a little unfair to oversimplify the Ouya to just indicating &quot;people were indeed interested in a cheap console that plays phone games on their TV.&quot; In addition, one of Ouya&#x27;s biggest draws was its openness which Google and Apple will have a harder time competing with than just releasing a cheap console with better polish.

My take on this, and maybe I&#x27;m wrong, is that Apple and Google have some really cool knives in development, and they&#x27;re hoping to succeed with them when they jump into the long-running console industry gunfight.

&quot;Google has now set its sights on making its own Android-based video game console. The kicker? This is supposed to be in response to Apple doing the very same thing.&quot;<p>Who knew Apple would ever have an Android-based device?

Apple announced their controller standard as well so we will see more and more iOS games come out that support the controller.<p>I have been saying this same thing for about 2 years now- the age of consoles is almost over. A Sony&#x2F;MS box is not going to be the thing that delivers your living room entertainment, it will be a mobile device, ipad, or set top box from that same ecosystem.<p>Disc based games need to die but Sony&#x2F;MS won&#x27;t let them quite yet. Android&#x2F;Apple are coming into the living room gaming arena from a completely different perspective that fits better into the current times. 100% downloadable, integrated with your smart phone &#x2F; tablet, no more 5 year product cycles, etc. The advantages for being able to just ignore 3 generations of past consoles and come up with something completely new are huge.<p>Now we just need to see what the Steam Box is going to do.

Forbes never sees anything coming, or even stuff already here. We should stop paying attention to them.

If (when) Google develops the console, they are developing the software for it as well. What is stopping Ouya, Roku or Samsung from integrating this directly into their hardware and circumvent the need for an additional box altogether? This is not a console war between Apple and Google, more competition between Apple and Android since I think again the big winner will be Samsung here. Also its not a war but just a continuation of what&#x27;s going on in the mobile space.

The real market opportunity is games that are fun.<p>You do not need to realistically model blood and brain-matter splattering or how sweaty arm-hair behaves on athletes in order to have fun.<p>And it&#x27;s not a hardcore vs. casual dichotomy, either. Exploitative in-game purchases in casual games are as bad as all the bloody war games.