Ouya Consoles To Be Released Annually

One of the things we don’t often see among gaming consoles is yearly cycle updates. In fact its more common amongst smart phones as the chips get faster and faster, and the desire to refine their experience becomes greater amongst makers. But the Ouya, the Kickstarter project that we love, looks to be adopting that similar release cycle.

Speaking to The Verge today, Ouya founder and CEO Julie Uhrman discussed a number of interesting topics, but one of them happened to be the release cycle. Since the Ouya technically packs the same punch as a smart phone, albeit one with a bit more oomph, Uhrman talks about the console taking on a yearly upgrade cycle in order for it to keep up with the latest chips brought out by manufactures.

The first-gen Ouya will come shipped with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip and whilst this is powerful, the company announced the Tegra 4 chip which outputs even more power earlier this year. Hardware limitations happen to be something that one developer questioned, but with these yearly upgrade cycles the limitations that are present could be easily ironed out in the next iteration. “Our plan is to have a yearly refresh of Ouya where we leverage the best-performing chips and take advantage of falling component prices to create the best experience we can at the $99 price point,” said Uhrman.

One of the things that will eventually draw people back into the experience is if they see premium quality games that people are playing being advertised over the low-quality ones.

Uhrman also went on to talk about how games are going to be promoted through the service, as one of the things that will eventually draw people back into the experience is if they see premium quality games that people are playing being advertised over the low-quality ones. “We don’t believe it’s the number of downloads, or the amount of money spent. It’s how many times you play a game in a given period of time, and how quickly you start playing a game. When you boot up Ouya, how many times is it the first game you play? How many friends do you tell about a particular game? These are indicators that you really love a game.” 

It all sounds very interesting. The guys and gals at Ouya essentially want to make sure that the experience users are getting is top quality, of course [like any other company] that poses challenges in the form of affordability and manufacturing limitations. But if the console is able to pick up enough leverage to be retailed in high street stores like Best Buy, Target and Gamestop, alongside the the synergy gained from tablets and phones, the Android console market could possibly have enough momentum to exceed people’s expectations and actually compete with the big guns.

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