Ouya Developers Express Themselves

Ouya has announced that they plan on helping to kickstart indie devs by matching successful funding that they acquire through upcoming Kickstarter campaigns. But just what does it mean to apply for these funds?

First we should take a look at whether or not Indies are making money from the Ouya. Granted it’s a little early to tell at the moment as the console is still very new… but here’s some information on that sales in short form and long form.

As you can see, sales so far are pretty dismal. Towerfall looks like a fantastic game, and I’d love to play it. But the reality is, Ouya is too niche of a product. And the devs know it. They’re going to port it over to PC, which eliminates any need for someone like me to go out and buy an Ouya. Lets face it, console purchases are largely determined by its exclusive titles… which certainly explains why Ouya wants to get some exlusive titles (and why they’re offering up this fund for Ouya games). But as Mike Rose points out over on IndieStatik, this promotion is not necessarily going to be the cure-all that they’re hoping it will be:

“But let’s be realistic here: It’s hard enough to get your Kickstarter funded, without only being able to target Ouya owners.

 

And it’s not like Ouya owners are massive spenders either. The Ouya is currently one of the cheapest game consoles on the market, and from the figures I’ve seen bouncing around on Twitter and blogs, games aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes.

 

Hence, if you target only Ouya owners with your Kickstarter, you’re destined to fail from the get-go. How it’s going to look when, months down the line, there are dozens of failed Ouya game Kickstarters scattered across the boneyard of the crowd-funding website?”

I’d be weary about making a Kickstarter where you promise to be Ouya exlusive… but I suppose it could be an advantage under one circumstance. Lets say you’ve got a game like Towerfall that you want to release. You can essentially treat the Ouya crowds as your beta. Get your game exlusive, and then spend those 6 months of exclusivity really harvesting feedback from your playerbase, fixing bugs, and working on your port to your other application. You could likely get some valuable insight from having done a launch to a smaller audience before targeting a larger one. And it may just go a long way to getting you the credibility you’d need to have your game on Steam via Greenlight… or get you the funding you might need to do some extra features. It’s a way to get some extra promotion right? But I’d be weary of developing something that will remain a permanent exlusive for Ouya.

Gamasutra’s got a much more in-depth feature on what the current line-up of Ouya game developers have to say about their experience.