A team including Yves Behar (One Laptop Per Child), Ed Fries (ex vicepresident of game publishing at Microsoft), Muffi Ghadiali (Amazon Kindle) and Julie Uhrman (IGN) are hard at work creating a $99 Android-based console.
Each unit is designed to be hackable, all games will be free to play and any developer can publish games to the system.
The device will also come with a full set of development tools for those who like to dabble in homebrew.
No release date has been set.
Source: The Verge
Nickboss1
Yes please.
3shirts
Brilliant idea. Android is a great platform for this and if the hardware is close to that of current high end android phones it will be perfectly able to run some impressive games.
Zephyre
So where’s the incentive to release games on it if they are free? Ad supported games?
Peter Chapman
free-to-play rather than simply free?
Micro transaction supported stuff probably. It seems silly to limit developers to that one model at this point though.
cam the man
And lots of advertisements!
Gamoc
Yes please, I like new toys.
Dom El
Hmm, interesting for running emulators at least – I’m not convinced that publishers would put full blown titles onto such a platform, particularly as at that price it’s unlikely to have much processor power…
Radiitz
An android games console?! *jizz*
Ed the Penguin
Nice.
KeRaSh
Depending on the specs this could be an emulator’s wet dream. I’m definitely interested.
fs
Yep – this is interesting. I wonder how powerful an emulator it will be able to run however?
TSBonyman
I imagine everyone would want one of those… everyone except the game developers perhaps.
Sounds interesting though, i would certainly go open-platform if i had the choice but given this probably won’t be supported by the industry it might still be a useful second machine.
gideon1451
The Apple sheep might not be so interested, aha.
Crocadillian
Why wouldn’t game developers be interested? If the specs are right and if it’s popular enough, this will bring open development to the console market, eliminating the need for a publisher, and the mess that they always make – it’s just you and your ideas. Do you think game developers like depending on publishers? XD
colmshan1990
An Android console?
I can already see Pokemon Red running on my HDTV…
Might be a bit blocky though. :P
fs
That was exactly what I was thinking!
hazelam
red? nah.
Yellow
Pikachu! ^_^