Last week the Nexus Q made quite a splash when Google announced the little orb, not only due to its strange price tag but also due to the fact that Google themselves have encouraged “hacking” of the box. A lot of people associate a “hack” with negative connotations however, in the Open Source world and especially the Linux world it’s simply a term that refers to a tweak or an advancement. Google has gone a long way to make “hacking” not only sanctioned on their hardware but an incentive for buyers and developers alike. So far, we’ve seen the Q run easter eggs and now there’s a rough build of clockworkmod running on the little guy, too.
Apply the same hackable concept but, to a gaming console and you’ll essentially get what the idea that the Ouya game consoles hopes to deliver. The idea is that a gaming console sold for that sweet price of $99 would run atop Android and you play games on the device after connecting it to a TV however, that’s not all you get, it’s said that those that buy the console will receive a dev kit with it as well. Thus encouraging a great number of hacks to be implemented on the device and giving game devs the ability to make real games for this little guy.
It’s going to be interesting to see whether or not this can take off however, with a number of big names behind the box sponsoring it shouldn’t be too hard to see this in my living room sometime soon. The designer, Yves Behar is designing the box and it’s got IGN’s Julie Uhrman as the company’s CEO and founder making this look like a likely prospect, for sure. Should the Ouya come with Google’s services onboard isn’t yet know but, I’d be willing to bet that they won’t be present here. Now, if the Ouya could also stream content from the likes of Netflix then I’d have to say that this has the potential to murder Vizio’s co-star Google TV box at the same price point.
[Source: The Verge]