

Google is developing its own Android game console - Report - drawkbox
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195257/Google_is_developing_its_own_Android_game_console__Report.php

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drawkbox
Apple and Google will most likely be the real 'new consoles'. Maybe this will
make Microsoft allow self-publishing.

Looking forward to this.

Apple was always going to take their appstore apps/games to the TV and games
are always a huge boon to that.

"Wall Street Journal sources suggest the move is motivated not simply by the
recent launch of the Ouya and the upcoming GameStick but also on expectations
that Apple will be introducing game support with an upcoming version of Apple
TV."

They will also allow self-publishing like their appstores on mobile because
unlike Microsoft/XBone they realize larger markets/economies sell more
hardware and make more money, in the end they also allow and create games that
are more fun. Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that
set is better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market. Gonna be
funny when Microsoft has to change tune on that one as well.

Also Apple TV and Google consoles will be micro and more like OUYA, less of a
financial burden than powerful consoles like Xbone. Sony has it right with PS4
and is allowing self-publishing, which will in turn sell more hardware and get
more games on there. Microsoft is just making poor moves on open storefronts.

~~~
throwaway2048
>Even it 99% of games on mobile are below par the 1% from that set is
better/bigger than any curated/controlled console market.

I strongly dispute this point, while there may be a few decent mobile titles,
the quality and number of quality titles is still nowhere near traditional
platforms.

~~~
drawkbox
Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,” Gabe
Newell.

John Carmack on this point: “I was really happy that when mobile came along
with the more ‘pure’ games, they didn’t have to be a $50 game that had man-
centuries in them,” Carmack tells Ars Technica. “You can have these small
things that cost people a couple bucks.”

“I don’t have a lot of free time and I don’t have 50 hours for Skyrim. That’s
not to take anything away from the massive titles, but it’s great to have this
broad spectrum of gaming,” Carmack added.

Yes there will still be blockbuster games that can't be made on the current
devices (although I'd argue tablets and TV consoles will surpass game consoles
not long after the 2013 refresh). The idea is that you have so much
competition that games and innovation have to become more fun. On controlled
environments that level of competition is not explored because of the high
dollar amount needed to play or compete.

Game companies like Halfbrick, Firemint, and others wouldn't exist without the
openness of mobile. If consoles were truly open there would be games that the
bigger companies cannot even risk trying that are immensely fun. PC games
allowed anyone in and companies like id software appeared, leading to PC games
from Valve as one example. Market determination of good is better when bigger.

The internet itself is an example of this. Would Hacker News exist if there
were only 10 publishers of content on the web? Bigger and more open always
makes for better content. Even if not now, it will shortly. Games have gotten
back to arcade level fun rather than trying to create movies. Controlled, top
down ivory tower markets never create better content, the currents get too
stagnant.

~~~
throwaway2048
_Gabe Newell on this point: “Economies get better the bigger they are,”_

While this might be true in isolation, ie. a widgetbox with 30M sales is a
strictly a better economy than the same widgetbox with 10M sales, I do not
believe it to be transitive ie. Widgetbox @ 30M sales vs PlayBox360 @ 10M
sales. This played out in the last console generation with the wii vastly
outselling both the ps3 and the xbox360, but having an inferior library.

Smartphones and tablets are by no means new, nor niche platforms at this point
(outselling every other gaming platform by a mile), but id argue that by and
large they have failed to produce the kind of quality games available on say,
the DS/3DS.

I cannot even think of one mobile title that measures up to even an average DS
game.

~~~
honestcoyote
You can't think of even one? I can give you several. I'm speaking primarily of
the iOS market, specifically ipad versions since this is what I'm most
familiar with, but many of these exist or will exist on Android as well.

XCom, in a direct port from the PC version, was just released.

Final Fantasy Tactics, III (ironically enough, ported from the original DS
code), IV, and other FF titles. Spectral Souls, ported over from the
Playstation portable, and Warhammer Quest, in a new version, are also present
for your tactical RPG needs.

Knights of the Old Republic was recently released with all the content from
the PC version, but a revised control scheme.

Board and card game conversions have been quite popular lately with things
such as Stone Age, Agricola, Ticket to Ride, Elder Sign: Omens, Magic etc.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes- a game originally released on the DS

Phoenix Wright, also from the DS.

Minecraft PE

Waking Mars

Plants vs. Zombies

King of Dragon Pass - the unusual and very interesting kingdom management,
RPG, interactive fiction, really-doesn't-fit-in-any-categories game.

Battle Academy and Battle of the Bulge: two PC quality turn-based wargames. In
the case of Battle Academy, this is a direct port from the PC version.

I'm really just scratching the surface with the games I've played recently.
There's tons more. The amount of iOS quality games is rapidly approaching
equality with the DS market if it hasn't already surpassed it.

~~~
throwaway2048
while ill conceed these titles are avalible, years after the fact ports
(largely with ill suited control schemes, virtual buttons suck badly) arnt
much of a market driver on any platform.

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hkmurakami
So the players are Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, and Vavle vying
for living room media dominance through one strategy or niche play or another.
I have my popcorn ready. This competition will be good for us consumers.

~~~
Steko
"This competition will be good for us consumers."

Not sure how strong this point is.

For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the consoles
you don't have.

For another you're going to get shitty ports on a lot of them.

Finally there will be an inevitable shakedown to 2-3 players and if you've
invested in one of the losers well just ask the people that bought 3DO's and
Atari Jaguars and all the other losers of the early 90's console wars how
great that worked out for them in the end.

Game devs are already competing with each other for your time and dollars.
Beyond that you only need 2 major consoles to put pressure on each other to
keep prices honest.

~~~
VikingCoder
> For one the average consumer will miss out on more exclusives for the
> consoles you don't have.

Exclusives are not good for consumers. If the companies that make them are
punished accordingly, maybe they will learn.

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michaelpinto
Sometimes Google feels unfocused to me, and this is a good example of this.
This reminds me of the Nexus Q which came out a year ago — and was never
backed a real national (or international) ad campaign. Is Google really ready
to make a real game platform, or is this just another android thingie? In the
same way that Apple struggles with software services Google really has a way
to go with hardware. And I don't mean just making good hardware, but marketing
it to a mass audience.

~~~
mrtron
The Nexus Q feels like the Nexus One. An experiment paving the way into a
market. A hardware beta test.

I expect to see an amazing Samsung gaming+streaming machine running Android.

~~~
michaelpinto
If you see an announcement from Samsung they won't mention Android!

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steve19
I love Android, but Google has a terrible record with these kind of devices.
Google TV is a pretty poor system, it really should be more simple and look
more like XBMC, and the (original) Nexus Q speaks for itself.

~~~
Lerc
Google TV, Nexus Q etc are trying to crack a different nut, and one of the
hardest ones out there. The fact that these things are called set-top-boxes in
an era where TV's aren't big enough to put anything on top of them is an
indicator how long people have been trying to make it work.

XBMC has been most successful because They have focused on providing people
what they want. Every company has delivered something that they would like
people to have (and ideally pay them lots for content).

Consoles on the other hand seem to be marketed by Black magic, Hype, and dodgy
stats. That does seem to be more Microsoft's game than Google's, but they are
gaining ground.

------
_pmf_
I'll just take this as another of Google's side project that generate some
buzz but ultimately lead nowhere.

~~~
tjbiddle
If it 'generates some buzz' but in doing so helps push others to follow suit
and help build the market - Then I'll count it as a win. Also, if it ends up
being enough of a threat - Maybe it will push Microsoft into allowing self
publishing.

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shmerl
Only Valve works on a real glibc Linux console though.

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frozenport
I can't think of many fun games for Android. What are we paying for? Old Final
Fantasy and GTA3? I don't see a market for this until their games improve
which is nontrovial given the poor graphics performance of these so called
consoles.

~~~
gohrt
Are you comparing an XBOX to an Android phone? Android is an OS, not a
hardware platform. It can be deployed to arbitrarily powerful hardware, so
long as the graphics drivers are written.

~~~
frozenport
There are few games and the hardware is crap compared to a console. Doesn't
look like it is changing.

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pandaman
I doubt they are aiming at the PS4/X1. Making hardware was never Google's
forte and you need to be very good at that to compete with either system.

My guess they want another pass at Google TV.

~~~
dman
Yet they make the best non apple laptop out there in the market right now.

~~~
pandaman
I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware, are not they? If not I
stand corrected.

~~~
dman
Whose laptops are not off the shelf hardware anymore? ie I am sure someone
else manufactures them to googles specs - but thats the same for apple, dell,
hp etc. From the moment you pick up a chromebook pixel you get the feeling
that you normally get from apple devices - that someone thought this whole
thing through. Actually the chromebook pixel and the htc one are the only two
devices off late which had this effect on me.

~~~
pandaman
I was talking about consoles. They are not off the shelf. Even the Xbox
(though it was pretty close).

~~~
dman
"I thought their laptops are off the shelf hardware"

~~~
pandaman
And they are, apparently.

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ensmotko
I've been anticipating rumors such as these ever since Google announced Google
Game Services. I just hope said services get improved before the actual
console launches.

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Pxtl
Finally. They should've been on this over a year ago.

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andrewstuart
Does that mean games built in Java?

~~~
asperous
There is an android native interface.
[http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html](http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html)

Games _could_ be written in Java. Just intelligently schedule garbage
collection and in return you get to use a very fast safe, well-optimized JITed
virtual machine.

They won't be, of course, they'll be written in NDK because the culture of the
game industry is a powerful one, and one that takes pride in their ways. It
would be like telling a race car enthusiast that continually-variable
transmission is better for racing because even though it's less efficiant it
allows the driver to focus on driving and is always in the exact gear needed.
The driver would never except this because in their mind they are an amazing
driver and manual makes them faster because it is more efficient and makes
them feel cool.

~~~
pcwalton
> They won't be, of course, they'll be written in NDK because the culture of
> the game industry is a powerful one, and one that takes pride in their ways.
> It would be like telling a race car enthusiast that continually-variable
> transmission is better for racing because even though it's less efficiant it
> allows the driver to focus on driving and is always in the exact gear
> needed. The driver would never except this because in their mind they are an
> amazing driver and manual makes them faster because it is more efficient and
> makes them feel cool.

The problems of concurrent garbage collection in games are not imaginary, as
you seem to be implying. Keep in mind that 60 FPS allows a maximum of 16 ms of
GC per frame, and that's assuming the game has no work to do at all. Turn on
the GC profiling sometime in your browser of choice and look at the numbers
sometime; then extrapolate that to the slower CPUs and RAM on mobile and you
can see why this can be a cause for concern.

~~~
pjmlp
John Carmack seems to have other opinion

[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/342324071004008448](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/342324071004008448)

~~~
pcwalton
It's hard to read into a tweet, but I'm pretty sure that he was not saying
that the performance of a dynamically typed, garbage collected language will
be equivalent to the performance of optimized, tuned C and C++.

~~~
pjmlp
No, if you follow his tweeter feed, he means he would like to have GC strong
typed language with the performance from C and C++.

This follows his ongoing Haskell experiments and with a short deviation to
Scheme/Lisp.

I was just trying to make the point that known game developers do value GC
languages for game development, even if nowadays that is still not mainstream.

I am old enough to remember the days C was considered too slow and together
with Pascal was just used for prototyping ideas, if ever. Times change.

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mh-
cool, this can sit next to the Nexus Q from I/O.

~~~
vladikoff
If you do not like your nexus q, maybe donate it to an education facility
where students can hack on it

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riquardo0
Google has taken a jab at games before (Google plus Games anyone) but
unsuccessful, not sure if they'll be able to get into it ever.

