XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya

Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by semiquaver on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @09:54AM (#4350073)

Most android developers try to ensure that their apps work with popular devices whether or not there is an official partnership. I can appreciate the PR value of all these 'an existing android app will work with Ouya' announcements, but I thought that ecosystem compatibility was part of the original value proposition.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by AndrewDucker on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:22AM (#4350191)

What with it being Android, there's variation in the screen sizes and graphics chips in the hardware you're running on.

If XBMC wants to run with hardware acceleration then that will probably require extra effort to make sure that there are drivers it can work with.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by barranger on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:08AM (#4350130)

Ouya adds a couple of other requirements to the "will work with Ouya":

1) Controller Support 2) Must have at least a free demo, if not another free component.

Also it looks like they won't be having the Play Store, meaning that for many (most?) Android title won't work with Ouya.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by ConstantineXVI on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:48AM (#4350327)

The Android UI toolkit actually already handles controllers relatively well thanks to the use of trackballs and D-pads on first and second generation Android hardware as well as Google TV; non-game apps such as TuneIn and XBMC[0] shouldn't have many issues adapting, if any. (2) is a business model issue, not a technical one.

[0] XBMC is mostly custom, but happens it hails from a controller-based platform to begin with.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by vibrunazo on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @11:25AM (#4350504)

Well, pedantically speaking, providing a free app is also a technical issue and not only a business one. Many of the paid apps have no in-app payment set up at all. For the OUYA, you'd need to implement that. Which is easy, but there's still some engineering and design time to invest to adapt (some) apps to the OUYA.

Tho, as an IAP advocate myself, I'd argue that every game dev in their right mind should have that already by now. And I applaud OUYA for "forcing" developers to do the smart thing. But unfortunately, some will still need to adapt.

But you're right, I'm just pointing a detail.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by sp332 on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:42AM (#4350285)

You don't need play store to get apps to run on Android devices. I know some apps from the Amazon app store won't run without the "Amazon app store" app installed but I've never seen a program depend on Play the same way.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by mtgx on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:31AM (#4350235)

I'm pretty sure OUYA will not have access to the Play Store officially, and they will have their own store, which should also filter out all the apps that aren't specifically made for the TV experience.

So this is more like an "Angry Birds is coming to Kindle Fire" thing. Just because it's compatible, doesn't mean it will be available out of the box, if it doesn't have access to the Play Store, and since it's a much different form factor from phones and tablets, the interfaces will need to be changed quite a bit.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by ErikRogneby on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @02:13PM (#4351401)

"officially" being the key word there. It's available on any number of mod sites.

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Re:XBMC and TuneIn on the Ouya by altarelli on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @02:45PM (#4351577)

f-droid.org comes to mind.

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