
AirConsole – Play multiplayer games together - joseTulio
https://www.airconsole.com/welcome
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hardwaresofton
The concept and execution seems cool but I just wanna note in case anyone
important is listening that "can you play them all" is one of the weakest
taglines I've ever heard.

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easytiger
It's pretty close to the $15 billion pokemon franchise tagline.

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hardwaresofton
Yeah, but this isn't at all like Pokemon, which is the problem. I thought it
was obvious, but my point is that "collecting" games or trying "play all the
games" isn't the right tagline for a game platform.

Has any established gaming platform that has ever existed (except for maybe
the super early ones) made game-collecting a thing? Trying to play every game
on a console is a silly and pointless fools errand -- yeah you could do it,
but there's no inherent value. At least to me, it seems like the value-add for
a system like this is to effortlessly play games with your friends, and then
_maybe_ to check out some console exclusives that represent interesting
gameplay. Who in their target market wakes up and says to themselves "I need
to play every game ever released for this new platform"? They're doing
lifestyle segment marketing already, hence the smiling clean-cut millenials
sitting and enjoying quality time together, they're encouraging me to want to
be like those people, but then I read the line and instantly asked myself "why
would I want to do that".

Just seems like the marketing team took the wrong turn on the road to being
different. Maybe I'm totally wrong, and I'm just one data point, but also,
maybe it's that that line that was awkward.

[EDIT] - On second thought, my original post was badly phrased. It's not the
"weakest tagline I've ever heard", it just seems to massively _NOT_ fit the
context/platform/product.

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Kiro
I've played a lot of AirConsole and they completely destroyed the platform
when they introduced their monetization platform. I don't mind having to
register or watch ads but it's completely broken. Nowadays we never manage to
play a single game without someone getting stuck in an ad on their phone,
which means the whole game stops working for everyone.

It's a shame because it used to be really awesome. In the early days you
didn't even have to register for an account, just boot up the webpage on your
phone and enter the code on the big screen.

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dogma1138
If you have a smart TV which runs android you can use your phone as a
controller and just play one of the plethora of games available on Android.

[https://support.google.com/androidtv/answer/6122465?hl=en-
GB](https://support.google.com/androidtv/answer/6122465?hl=en-GB)

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cyrusmg
Warning: Firefox is not supported on Android. Game controller page asks you to
start it in Chrome.

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thecupisblue
Install the app?

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zuron7
Doesn't seem to work without Google Play Services. Crashes on my device. Also
seems like it isn't possible to buy the premium version without having the
app.

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thecupisblue
Mind asking, how is life without Play services?

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codefined
Not the parent commenter, but am currently using F-Droid and not Play
services. It seems great for everything I wish to do on Android. Only
exception is the game options, which are very limited.

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lecarore
I've been using it at parties for a while, always showing it to new people. I
had the same idea and at some point that airconsole already existed. It's fun
and the setup is easy, but many games are buggy (the hockey one for exemple
has terrible controls and i never managed to play with 4+ people). Good
concept, but probably hard to make reliable enough. Their SDK is easy to use,
but i couldn't find a proper workflow to develop with it, i ended up having to
re-type a game code all the time, so i gave up.

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djsumdog
How do they make money? Are only certain games free and then you pay a
subscription, or do they do in-game purchase rubbish?

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dwild
They show ads every few games if I remember correctly. They offer a
subscription to remove theses ads and only a single person of the group need
to have one.

It's fun but thing is, paying 5$ a month is too much for the fun I got from
it. It would be better if it worked like Jackbox with a single higher fee.

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kennydude
This reminds me of Jackbox Party games. Those work almost flawlessly and
include the phone as more than just a controller

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joshstrange
+1 for Jackbox Party Games. I have all 3 on my XBone and 1 & 2 on my laptop
(and Drawful 2 on both as well). It's a fun game as long as it's all setup and
ready to go.

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dlhavema
+1 for Drawful and the other one that is basically Baulderdash with phones.
super fun for large groups of silly people.

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isuckatcoding
This is fantastic! I've been looking for a way to play games long distance
with my SO who doesn't have a console or a beast PC.

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lecarore
Sorry to tell you that, but that won't do. This is meat to replace split
screen playing, not some online multiplayer videogame. You could do it by
sharing your screen, but the latency would be terrible, and it's usually not
so great to start with.

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isuckatcoding
Awww man good point

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alessioalex
Suggestion: add a qr code so you can just scan it instead of having to type
the code on your phone.

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anilakar
Suggestion: stay away from them. Opening the browser and typing in a URL
followed by a short code is way faster than getting all participants to
download a QR code reader.

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ekzy
QR code reader? I believe most native photo apps can read them now, it
shouldn't hurt to have both the URL and a QR code

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kowdermeister
Not on Android v8 as I just checked.

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ReverseCold
Stock Android still doesn't. I think Samsung also has this through "Bixby
Vision"

Basically, why not have a QR code in addition to the URL displayed?

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dlhavema
Uggh.. don't get me started on Bixby... it's like a modern day Clippy... "I
see you accidentally pressed the hardware button to awaken me the 10th time.
how can i take over your screen today?"

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ReverseCold
Why not just download an app to remap it? I remapped mine to screen rotation
lock.

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dogma1138
TBH with the game library available and the fact that most Android TVs can run
games and much better games and that Android TV allows you to use the phone as
a controller this provides fairly little value.

This will not replace console gaming, this won't even a good alternative to
the casual party games you can run on most smart TVs these days.

It's an interesting idea but the availability of established and better
alternative on the market just won't allow it to establish itself.

~~~
dwild
> casual party games you can run on most smart TVs these days.

Like what? The only similar game I know is Jackbox Party games and it
certainly won't run on any smart tv, you need a proper computer/console to run
it.

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dogma1138
Jackbox runs on Android TV, Fire TV and Apple TV.

Plus you have plenty of various social and card games on the Android TV Google
Play store.

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lumos_42
Hey! anyone tried it? How's the gameplay/performance?

Game recommendations anyone?

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Kiro
I thought a lot more people had heard of AirConsole!

Obviously the performance is bad for games requiring quick response times but
with that said there are a couple of ones you would think wouldn't work with
the delay/lag but actually work fine (racing games). The best games are the
party games though.

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epaga
Wow - I've never heard of it before, and consider myself relatively
knowledgeable when it comes to gaming. How long has it been around?

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zengineer
Since September 2015 - but started very small back then

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pablasso
That library reminded me of Newgrounds. Back in the day, it was a treat to go
through all the games to discover gems but I don't have the patience anymore.

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dogecoinbase
There's a much more valuable thing that's already been named that for quite
some time: [https://www.get-
console.com/shop/en/27-airconsole](https://www.get-
console.com/shop/en/27-airconsole)

~~~
unixhero
Umm. Nice, but what you're posting has nothing to do with the software project
OP posted.

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dogecoinbase
They have the same name. Now, when you do a web search for the valuable one
that's been around for a long time, you instead get the new videogame thing.
They chose to stomp on this name rather than respect an existing thing, and
this attitude says something about their company.

~~~
mikekchar
It's a brand name for a USB device that provides an RS-232 interface. There is
_absolutely_ no way to confuse the two things. If you were searching for the
RS-232 device and you happened to know the brand name for this particular one
(not sure why you would, exactly), then you could search for "airconsole
rs-232" and Google ranks it #1. If you are searching for "usb rs-232", at
least for _me_ it doesn't even end up on the first page.

If we're talking about trademark infringement, then this is not even close
(it's impossible to confuse the two products). If we're talking about being
nice: if you had to avoid every single established name of every single minor
product in every single country in the world... you would have no names left.
All new products would have to make up gibberish names.

I appreciate that for some reason this device is "mainstream" in your eyes and
should have some extra special protection, but that's not the way
international agreements on trademarks work -- for a reason.

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orastor
This is so cool, I really wish there were an open source alternative.

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tokyodude
[https://docs.happyfuntimes.net](https://docs.happyfuntimes.net) is kind of an
open source alternative. It used to have a whole console like system (install
games, game switcher, etc) but devs didn't want that.

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timavr
They probably need to talk to Apple regarding their 5 star review on iOS.

