OUYA Subscription Model

[arcticdog]

Yeah but most companies take the stance of if it ain't broke don't fix it. There are reasons why the most popular game providers don't offer all you can eat sub's.

Many said the exact same thing about Netflix when that was introduced years ago. It too had a modest catalog, with a lot of stinkers. The historical parallels are actually pretty astounding here.

Those that take the stance "if it's not broke, don't fix it" become complacent. Like Microsoft before Google and Apple handed their butt to them in the mobile market.
What it comes down to is.. people fear change, and things they can't wrap their head around.

But it's far more interesting to see how something like this MIGHT work rather than dismiss it outright. Those that do the latter (for anything, not just this particular thing) are simply against innovation and risk taking.

This DOA. For PS3 or Android, this would be great, but not for Ouya. "800 games", IMO, seems just like those CDs or knockoff Gameboy carts that advertised "1,000 games". Most were poor knockoffs, clones of other games, games with poor controller support, etc. Why would I spend more to play such a poor collection of software when PSN offers much more value with PS Plus?
59.99 for a year? Pass...

What does PSN offer? 1 or 2 freebies a month? Playstation Now is a subscription. Microsoft has always had a subscription model, and only recently do you get free games with it. So what really is the problem for another platform to try to do this? Why is it okay for some to do it but not the others? People will hate, but I guess it would kill them to be less hypocritical about it. (especially a certain outspoken critical developer who gave his game away for free on PSN. But I suppose Sony's magic end-user Jedi mind trick somehow didn't diminish the game's quality perception in their eyes. Or.. reality rules and it actually doesn't matter)

A subscription doesn't automatically change the games in the store any more than Avengers streaming on Netflix automatically changes it into a horrible or unsuccessful movie. If anything, the knockoffs, clones, poor controller support games stand to lose by a model like this in the long run. More people will try it, sure. But more people will also downrate them too. They no longer get to hide behind uncertainty of a purchase. Eventually they'll be made invisible to the bottom of the stack. 50 1-star ratings are far more telling of a game's quality than two 5-star ratings.

I just wonder if this will spark a bunch of pay to play games like on tablets where they give you so many moves or time & then you have to buy gems or some other crap to keep playing.

Oh and enter the drama:

http://www.stuff.tv/fifa-15/fully-ch...-yahoo-saves-c
more tabloid "reporting" by the "media".

I'm sure the developers who are upset about this could give back the money they make on it if they want, and OUYA can revoke the entitlement from the user (basically refunding it). But what it comes down to is.. those that want to buy their game would have bought it, and now they're potentially getting "paid" by users that might not have bought it at all. Somehow, I think if they were given the option to take the game back, the money will speak louder.

OUYA's assuming a great deal of the risk of a customer's purchase of a potentially bad game.

I guess I'd be curious as to where the fear comes from on the development side. Is there worry that the game might actually get tried and rated poorly (vs. getting tried/bought at all)? Is there worry that those buying clones will try other developer's clones (or the original game) virtually risk free and settle on the one that's the best quality? Are they worried that the lack of investment will suddenly make that game get played less and suffer in it's O-ranking (cough.. poor mobile ports.. cough)?

If any of that is true, I'd say the developers making the most noise about it are the ones you have to look out for.

What it comes down to is creating drama for the sake of creating drama. Not sure how anyone can complain that you can't make money on the platform, then complain about how attaching demos creates a hardship, and then ultimately complain that a company is trying something new to stimulate sales for them with no compromise to their asking price or require them to do anything else.