Ouya Marketing Campaign

[darth2d2]

Thing is, mobile and PC already let you self-publish and have done for years. The big 3 are slowly opening up their systems to self-publishing (some of them have further to go than others, but they talk a good talk). So far from being something unique to OUYA, it's more the standard, at which some platforms are already at, and the rest are moving purposely towards.

Publishing is somewhat separate from that. Traditionally, publishers do things that developers would find difficult to do alone. Namely market and distribute. Digital Distribution costs are now effectively zero, whilst new channels have opened up for marketing games. Things like youtube and social media and even getting press, which simply require man-hours, but can be done by an individual or small number of people, and don't require the economies of scale that traditional marketing required, and which publishers provided.

You could legitimately ask whether those "new marketing channels" are effective any more for new/small organisations, and for traditional marketing, publishers can sometimes still offer value for money. The problem on mobile platforms is over-supply of games, and the particulars of the app stores making anything not in the charts doomed to sink into obscurity. The issue when looking at OUYA is that, while there isn't much competition relatively speaking, it is also a really small market.

It's all very well saying developers should make games from the heart, but most developers are businesses. They have to put food on the table, so it's a case of making games that will enable them to do that (either right now or in the future). Since game development is so labour intensive, its difficult to make a substantive game just as a hobby in your spare time.

OUYA has arguably, to date, been running on dreams and good will, but that only lasts so long, and OUYA is a business as well. They can't wait 10 years for those kids to grow up and become paying customers, because it's investors aren't running this as a hobby either. At some point, it has to get its marketing and business side of things right.

From a business standpoint I think Ouya is doing well. They are a lean company with little overhead, a respectable profit margin, and they are in prime position to grow. Marketing costs a lot of money and there are no solid ROI numbers for marketing campaigns. Marketing is the highest risk area of capital investment for companies. Their presence in Canada is enough to keep investors happy as they only have one VC firm they need to please. Ouya is not public so they have less pressure to perform at the same level as Nintendo or even Nvidia.

I know that mobile and PC are self-publish friendly, but PC is a pain because you are programming to fit a large number of varied systems. Even low requirement games have issues with certain chips not playing well with their builds. Mobile limits you to an over-saturated casual gaming touch screen market that is a large chunk of Apple and programming for Apple products is like programming for the PS3, have fun porting that to Android. The Android market is even more of a mess and trying to compete with established Android franchises is like trying to outshine Call of Duty.

I don't even consider the Ouya and Android console. I feel that the most comparable system to Ouya is the original Xbox. In fact I would argue it is it's spiritual successor. The Ouya is couch-multiplayer focused, an open console (not that Microsoft intended the original Xbox to be), has a huge user base disparity when compared to it's competition and is stingy with sales figures (the original Xbox sales figures can only be estimated because the lack of Microsoft transparency.) I would also like to point out that that Xbox had some pretty controversial marketing attempts. You might even argue that the original Xbox was a flop because it sales are closer to the Gamecube then the N64.

Developers should look at the Ouya as an investment opportunity. Matt and the Mini Boss crew, The Meltdown devs, Fayju, Eric of Bomb Squad and I would say No Brakes Valet have a decent mind share and they will grow with Ouya if they want to. The Ouya will grow, simply because of word-of-mouth. In my opinion word-of-mouth has the best ROI out of any marketing approach because it avoids the Hype Cycle that plagued the Ouya early on. Or if the developers want, a good LAN or Family box campaign that is light handed could be awesome.

I would also like to see the Ouya bundled with a Pico projector. Give me a discount on the two things I need to make the Ouya the most portable source of multiplayer fun. Instead of playing Cards Against Humanity for the 1,000th time, it would be interesting to see Ouya market the box as an electronic board game box of sorts.