The Ouya Kickstarter – Clearing $7 Million In Its Final Hours

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 7, 2012

The Ouya Kickstarter has been extremely interesting to watch. To be honest, I’m a little surprised by the amount of support that has come through for this tiny little “indie” game console. They’ve cut a deal with OnLive, bringing some “streaming play” for mainstream games to this little platform. There will be an Ouya part of Final Fantasy III (the “real” 3, not FF6 re-branded as 3 in the U.S.), and at least one exclusive title on release. It is now on its final day (and change), and has managed to clear $7 million. Now, granted, most of this is little more than a pre-order for the console, and simply informs the company of the size of the pre-order. But at around 50,000 units pre-ordered at this point, this is a pretty solid showing.

Now, during the height of the console wars against the big-boy consoles, this number probably wouldn’t cut it. But does it have the potential for traction as an indie platform?

Probably. If we take a wild guess and say Kickstarter pre-orders will represent 10% of the install base the first year, that’s half-a-million consoles out there. For indie games, IMO, that’s not an unreasonable install base. Where it will have problems is if Android ports inform pricing for games, and the Ouya becomes a ghetto for game-in-a-month apps like the current iPhone / Android market. $2 games at 70% mean $1.40 in developer revenue per sale. Assuming a 1% turnover (which may be optimistic for the “average” indie game; we’ll have to see) times 5000 sales would be only $7,000 in revenue per game. That would kill the market for Ouya-exclusives.

However, if prices migrate higher on the average (we can dream, can’t we?) for bigger games – in at least the $5 – $10 range, and hopefully up to the $20 range, and if indies don’t rely on the Ouya as an exclusive platform, I think there are some good possibilities there. And indies can certainly aspire to a greater than 1% penetration. Anyway – the bottom line is that I think an Ouya as part of a cross-platform strategy would definitely be a viable option for indies, who really don’t need to sell millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of copies to sustain their business. And maybe, if the console really takes off, it could become a decent platform for exclusive titles.

I’m getting one. My hopes are modest, but I’m a fan of the concept. And I’d like to have my games available for it – hopefully much more likely now that I’ve switched to Unity as an engine.

Anyway, there are a few hours left if you want to get in on the Kickstarter:

Ouya Kickstarter – Less than 36 Hours Remaining!

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



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