SHINKICKING GIANTS Gerry McEvoy gives us a look at OUYA
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fter the last issue, I had planned to write an article decrying the lack of Bedroom developers. I would have written that Innovation of both software and hardware by creative, freelance, individuals was being suffocated by rising costs and big companies being over-sensitive about their products which has led to a situation where people who buy a console don’t actually own it. I had planned to hark back to the halcyon days of the Commodore 64, a time where all you needed was ability, imagination and access to a computer to have a shot at creating the next big game. In contrast, today, big studios employ hundreds of people to produce a single game. Then the OUYA kickstarter launched and made all of that redundant: Target $950,000, raised: $8,596,474). Fixing the above problems is a big part of the ethos of the project, which is why it is Android based and 100% hackable. (Android is the software which most of the phones and tablets without that fruit logo on them run.) Don’t panic! Nobody is getting free reign to do whatever they please
with your data, it simply means that the root kit and all other pertinent details are available free of charge to any developer, so if you want to make a light gun and bring a new version of Duck Hunt to the console, you can do it without having to pay license fees to the OUYA people or pay through the nose for a proprietary SDK (That’s a Software Development Kit for the uninitiated) as you would have to do with certain other companies. The Duck Hunt and light gun people would probably have words though.
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Don’t panic!”
A standard screwdriver is all you need to get into the guts of the machine, and with standardised USB and Bluetooth, making your own peripherals will be a doddle in comparison to what is already on the market. As the console is Android based, this means a number of things, including the fact that any monkey who has familiarised themselves with the Android SDK (which is
Gerry McEvoy “I am made of victory with a slight tinge of epic and a twist of pure rock and roll” Gerry is currently setting up a new business yet still finds time to be a keyboard warrior, gamer and writer on all things tech. Prone to doing crazy things for charity. @Legendgerry on twitter
free to download and use) can develop games for the console. Any of those big mobile games can now be transferred from your tiny phone onto your big screen TV, and as long as the developers are willing to meet OUYAs primary