The Ouya Needs Exclusives – And How They Might Succeed in Getting Them

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2013

I love my Ouya. I’m the eternal optimist about it, and I definitely intend to release Frayed Knights 2 on the little cube.  Assuming I can get it to run well on the box, I don’t expect it to make much money, but I’m doing it because it’s cool. And because I’m building my game in Unity, which makes porting a lot less of a pain in the backside.

But the Ouya is facing real problems, none of which were unexpected.

The big deal of course is the need for exclusive content. In a world where most of their customers already have a tablet or smartphone, and a PC, and probably a few consoles, there’s a problem selling games that are already available everywhere else.  And while 60,000 units shipped to early backers of the project may sound like a lot to indie ears, it’s a very small install base. As of now, I don’t know how many more have sold in retail… but the reports are, unsurprisingly, that sales have been “light” for a console.

The game sales numbers are pretty much as predicted.  Towerfall, which has evolved to be the marquee title for the Ouya at launch, has sold about $30,000 so far (minus about 30% for the Ouya’s fees). That’s pretty decent for a small, 2D indie title, but even that is kind of an outlier. Overall, indies are making money on the console, but not a lot. Not enough to justify any exclusive “big games.” Yet that’s what it really needs. I know a few people who have bought an Ouya just for Towerfall. That’s a lot of money to spend on a $15 indie game. 🙂

But… Towerfall is definitely the kind of game the platform needs. It’s a “couch gaming” multiplayer game, designed for several people in the living room to play together. That’s the Ouya’s focus.

To that end, Ouya is doing something interesting – basically matching Kickstarter funds for Ouya exclusives, with an extra $100,000 prize kicked in.  This immediately drew some criticism, much of it along the lines of what a big risk it might be to indies, or how unfair it was that they were only rewarding Kickstarter projects that were already successful and thus didn’t really need the money.

I dunno – I  think it’s a decent idea, and it has nothing to do with fairness. For it to make sense, you have to look at it for what it is – a bribe. If you’ve been able to generate enough “buzz” on Kickstarter necessary to fund a game to a certain level – and that’s no small feat! – then you’ve got something that has the potential to sell consoles. They will bribe you to give them six months exclusivity.  This is a cash bonus to keep your team in pizza and ramen noodles for six months while you port to other platforms or whatnot.

I think this it’s a clever idea. But then, I’m one of those folks who bought Towerfall. My family loves it. It’s not particularly awesome to look at – it looks like a console title from twenty years ago – but it looks good enough to do its job and its very fun to play. I’d love to see more games like this, and it makes sense that the Ouya team would go back to Kickstarter and start mining it for killer games.

I like the box. I’d like to see them succeed. And while I’m no expert,  from my mouse-eye-view, if I was Kickstarter-inclined this would be pretty tempting. As a small indie, it wouldn’t be a home run all by itself, but it would be a reasonable incentive.

But will it be enough?

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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