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Game graphics on Android phones

I've been playing around my newly bought Nexus One and one thing I've found is that while graphics and colours when doing most things in general are so vibrant and beautiful to look at, games look decidedly 2nd rate.
Why is that? Is that something to do with the hardware or the APIs provided by Google? It would be nice to see something like Plants vs Zombies on the iPhone. From my limited use I find the graphics on my Nexus One slightly better than the 3GS on everything except when it comes to games, where it is left far behind. I found that really weird.
On a related note, I'm no developer myself, but I'm of the opinion that the success of the platform will depend a lot on 3rd party development, which means a lot of support given by Google to developers. What's the situation like now? How easy/hard is to develop for Android phones and what are the scopes for improvement?

Bump.
Any opinions from Android developers on here?

its because pre nexus one/desire there was only one android phone which could even play good graphics and that was the moto droid .
give the developers some time ... now that more powerful android phones are coming out, we'll see more and more better looking games ... as an example look at raging thunder 2 ... you might not like racing games but that game has exceptional graphics
nothing as good as the iphone yet, because iphone always had a very powerful gpu from the get go so all of iphone game developers have had that much time to play around with them ... android just started getting powerful gpus
hope that answers ... and anyone with more knowledge, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong

alienwolf426 said:
nothing as good as the iphone yet, because iphone always had a very powerful gpu from the get go so all of iphone game developers have had that much time to play around with them ... android just started getting powerful gpus
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Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. Which new Android phones have good GPUs on board?

Watch out here comes the "Droids"
TT1986 said:
Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. Which new Android phones have good GPUs on board?[/QUOTE
Galaxy S doing video game demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpP5QljEqow&feature=related
Galaxy S vs. Iphone 4:
http://3gsiphone.com/jailbreak-and-...-vs-samsung-galaxy-s-video-review-part-1.html
Reading about GPU:
http://androidandme.com/2010/03/new...bird-chip-to-have-3x-gpu-power-of-snapdragon/
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jhnstn00 said:
TT1986 said:
Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. Which new Android phones have good GPUs on board?[/QUOTE
Galaxy S doing video game demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpP5QljEqow&feature=related
Galaxy S vs. Iphone 4:
http://3gsiphone.com/jailbreak-and-...-vs-samsung-galaxy-s-video-review-part-1.html
Reading about GPU:
http://androidandme.com/2010/03/new...bird-chip-to-have-3x-gpu-power-of-snapdragon/
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Whoa! That is good.
Excellent stuff, good times ahead then.
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its mostly due to the fact that a lot of older phones (eg. the htc hero) dont have gpus whatsoever. the moto droid had a gpu, therefore could run good graphics in a 3d game. the samsung galaxy S has a great gpu on the cpu die and will run some really impressive games on it, in fact, it could run much better looking games than on the iphone.

for a art developers view
Ok well I'm a 14+ year vet of games industry on console games, in technical art production, but my view would be the same as a programmer I would suspect. Just like when doing a multi-platform release back in the ps, saturn, n64, dreamcast etc... days, you dont really want to do lots of work for all platforms. Neither do you want to cut your biggest market chunk out by them not getting the experience others get with better hardware. This takes me back to PC days when we have powerVR primary GPU's, or ATI, or Nvidia, or matrox, well the list got big. The graphics capabilities sometimes had to be addressed almost as if they were different platforms (this is b4 HAL abstraction sweetness and todays DX domination). I suppose at the end of the day, I would not choose to dev only on android for the SGS, that cuts some 99% of the market out. What apple has done is have fixed hardware and Development LIBs for that hardware. This makes it very easy to give all iPhone users the same experience. With android, too many variances in hardware and capability, also maybe hits taken from phone operator system additions and services.
So in my opinion, you cant have such and open system that can have lots of variations and get games in numbers and quality that we see on iphone. Not cause android phones cant do it. Cause not all of them can etc, and it's too varied.
Just my opinion

deanwray said:
So in my opinion, you cant have such and open system that can have lots of variations and get games in numbers and quality that we see on iphone. Not cause android phones cant do it. Cause not all of them can etc, and it's too varied.
Just my opinion
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I see what you mean. It's a lot like Console vs PC isn't it? I'm a PC gamer but i can understand why publishers/developers prefer console because they don't have to deal with a large variety of hardware. In other words, optimizing gaming experiences on Android phones could be harder than on iPhones because of the same reason.
Lets hope the difference isn't too big though.

TT1986 said:
I see what you mean. It's a lot like Console vs PC isn't it? I'm a PC gamer but i can understand why publishers/developers prefer console because they don't have to deal with a large variety of hardware. In other words, optimizing gaming experiences on Android phones could be harder than on iPhones because of the same reason.
Lets hope the difference isn't too big though.
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Porting from PC to console and vice-versa is probably easier than iPhone to Android, though.
I remember Valve saying that porting The Orange Box over to the Xbox 360 was very easy. They said something like they put the PC code -- with a few changes like control configuration -- through a 360 compiler and the game was up and running.
Also, with the PC, you have just two major processor brands (Intel and AMD) and two major graphics card brands (NVIDIA and ATI). The APIs and stuff are also far more mature.

google could do what Palm did.
Palms PDK allows porting of iPhone games to the Pre in a matter of hours.

theineffablebob said:
I remember Valve saying that porting The Orange Box over to the Xbox 360 was very easy. They said something like they put the PC code -- with a few changes like control configuration -- through a 360 compiler and the game was up and running.
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That's probably because it's made in XNA or some other cross platform code. That's one of the things pulling me toward WP7 (that and Zune Pass ).
Devs can write one code base, and in a matter of days have it ported to all major Microsoft software. As an Android dev myself, that would be amazingly useful did I also produce desktop software. I mean think about it, write an app for PC, then also target XBOX360, ZuneHD, normal Zunes, and WP7 all with essentially one codebase with very few small changes between them. That's some amazing stuff.
I toyed with XNA before and it is a beautiful way to code. Not to mention that the C# it uses is essentially Java with a few modifications.

Is Android ever going to be a viable gaming platform?

Ok, I had a Samsung Galaxy S this time last year which I ended up returning within the 14 day "Trial" and went for the iphone 4 instead.
My main concern and the main reason I went back to Apple/ios was because of the fantastic developer support the idevices have, they have pretty much every major big name developer and all the indie developers making games and apps for the platform, this just wasn't the case with Android last year, I was soooo disappointed by the gaming side of things with android.
Anyway, a year has passed and i'm back! this time with an Xperia Play with the latest Android OS and i'm ready to see how much has changed in that year! but wait..... still pretty much how I left the scene a year ago with the exception of gameloft and rovio who now release decent games on the platform.
My questions:
Where are all the big name developers on Android? why aren't they here? will they ever be here? infinitly blade, plants vs zombies, real racing, field runners, we rule etc?
Where are all the great apps and games from the Apple App Store? surely its easy to port them over to Android? and the ones we do get look bad compared to the idevice versions even though our android devices are more powerful, why is this?
Have I backed the wrong horse again? I really hope not......
I love Android as an OS, very cool but I can't help but feel it is lagging so far behind in the app/game/appstore race that it can't ever compete now, am I wrong?
Our Android devices are very powerful, why are no games showing off our hardware? Asphalt 6 looks stunning on my Xperia Play and using the gaming pad is amazing but is that it?

1. Money. Still it's much easier to monetize your work in AppStore than in Android Market. First, Android community likes openness, free software, etc., but iPhone users... they could spend 1000$ for a featureless I'm Rich App ;-) Second, it's much easier to steal/pirate apps on Android.
2. Native development was neglected by Google for long time. Main effort was put into Java development and C didn't have access to many Android APIs. Recently Google has added most of required APIs, but...
3. Android devices are poorly supported by their manufacturers. If you want to use newest features in your app then you have to develop for <6 months old devices. And, as mentioned above, many features which are important for gaming were added recently.
4. Device differences. Even if all Android devices would be perfect and fully compatible with each other, there're still various screen sizes and resolutions, CPU/GPU power, etc. When you develop a game for iOS, you have to buy iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad and iPad 2, test it on these devices and set visual quality specifically for them, so game will run smoothly. If you want to develop for Android, you have to think of potentially every possible screen size, ratio and resolution, you have to test it on as much devices as possible and try to guess proper visual quality on a device or add feature for setting it by the user - as in PC games. It's much more complicated.
But I'm not a game developer, so maybe some of above problems aren't true and maybe there are more of them.

Brut.all said:
1. Money. Still it's much easier to monetize your work in AppStore than in Android Market. First, Android community likes openness, free software, etc., but iPhone users... they could spend 1000$ for a featureless I'm Rich App ;-) Second, it's much easier to steal/pirate apps on Android.
2. Native development was neglected by Google for long time. Main effort was put into Java development and C didn't have access to many Android APIs. Recently Google has added most of required APIs, but...
3. Android devices are poorly supported by their manufacturers. If you want to use newest features in your app then you have to develop for <6 months old devices. And, as mentioned above, many features which are important for gaming were added recently.
4. Device differences. Even if all Android devices would be perfect and fully compatible with each other, there're still various screen sizes and resolutions, CPU/GPU power, etc. When you develop a game for iOS, you have to buy iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad and iPad 2, test it on these devices and set visual quality specifically for them, so game will run smoothly. If you want to develop for Android, you have to think of potentially every possible screen size, ratio and resolution, you have to test it on as much devices as possible and try to guess proper visual quality on a device or add feature for setting it by the user - as in PC games. It's much more complicated.
But I'm not a game developer, so maybe some of above problems aren't true and maybe there are more of them.
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Thanks! I didn't want to sound negative but would love to see Android do well on the gaming side of thing, hopefully this will happen one day?

Plants vs Zombies is due to be released on Android in the next couple months.

technoplunk said:
Plants vs Zombies is due to be released on Android in the next couple months.
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Is that it?!

If you were a developer at Google.............

Hello everyone,
Just for the sake of fun. If you have been given the opportunity to decide the future of android, What would you do? Which feature do you want to see in android?
May be people @ Google are 'really' watching this thread. Who knows?
Shoot your opinions
PS: I would say, a multi user (logoff and on) feature so that one can change profiles in office and home. (Haven't seen this as native android feature)

Feature wise, I'd push for smoother graphics, put an end to the "iPhone is faster" trolls.

Smoother ...more exclusives to android.. game mostly ...as gamevil seem to stick every thing on iPhone first ..
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One of the things that holds back game developers is having to do extra work to support multiple GPUs (Tegra, OMAP, Adreno, etc). It would be nice if Android had something like DirectX on Windows where the GPU brand doesn't matter, instead the GPU is certified for a DirectX # level and can run all games up to that #.
There have been some good games out there that were Tegra only early on for example and when you see its incompatible with your graphically capable OMAP device its not good. Judging from the reviews left people don't like when this happens.

I really don't understand why android cannot run as smooth as iphone, i think it's really system problem rather than hardware's problem...

crazyricky said:
I really don't understand why android cannot run as smooth as iphone, i think it's really system problem rather than hardware's problem...
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Apple have a few phones they build inhouse, and create software and drivers for it, that they can constantly tune and improve.
Google on the other hand, have to support an unlimited amount of devices and drivers, so they don't get the same time to improve drivers. Not to mention you then get 3rd parties with their own skins and what not.
It's the price we pay for freedom

[Q] Transformer or Transformer Prime?

Hey guys,
So here's my dilemma. I was thinking of getting a netbook for professional purposes (word, mindmapping software and possibily vintage gaming) but I've com to the conclusion that most netbooks pretty much suck hardware-wise (can't even do HD video <.<).
So I took a look at both the Transformers, and with their keyboard dock they seemed like a perfect choice, for their size and usability.
However, the vintage gaming I'm looking for (that I'm willing to throw away at this point) was only available for Windows (mostly). So being that I'm possibly opting for an Android "tablet-book" I'm still wondering this:
Are the rumors that Windows 8 will be ARM-compatible and possbily will work on the Transformer Prime? If so I might get one. If not I'll possibly go for the original transformer. But that leaves me with another question:
Except for the quad-core is the difference from the Tegra2 to the Tegra3 really steep in terms of performance?
Thanks in advance,
K.

Dont hold your breath for windows 8. The rumor says its only going to be sold pre-installed on devices, and not available for download to other devices. And since it isnt open source, porting it to other devices would be quite tricky, and also piss microsoft off.
The Prime is faster, no doubt. But is it enough to justify the price differences? I dont think so.
The tegra2 can not handle 1080p movies. The prime struggles with them as well but can play most of them.
But in whole, it sounds like a tablet wont satisfy your needs, unless you got access to a windows PC you can use through remote desktop all the time.
A tablet can not replace a laptop/pc yet. They arent ment for that. Once win8 tablets start to mature, that might change. But that might take years.

Goatshocker said:
Dont hold your breath for windows 8. The rumor says its only going to be sold pre-installed on devices, and not available for download to other devices. And since it isnt open source, porting it to other devices would be quite tricky, and also piss microsoft off.
The Prime is faster, no doubt. But is it enough to justify the price differences? I dont think so.
The tegra2 can not handle 1080p movies. The prime struggles with them as well but can play most of them.
But in whole, it sounds like a tablet wont satisfy your needs, unless you got access to a windows PC you can use through remote desktop all the time.
A tablet can not replace a laptop/pc yet. They arent ment for that. Once win8 tablets start to mature, that might change. But that might take years.
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Before anything thanks for the reply, every input is useful
The point is, I don't need it to substitute my desktop PC (I have a gaming rig, it would be impossible xD), I do need it to be able to work on documents on the go, read stuff, and browse the web like it was a netbook, but without sacrificing the abitity to watch video like I would have on a netbook.
In terms of gaming I only really need it to run all Android games flawlessly

KezraPlanes said:
In terms of gaming I only really need it to run all Android games flawlessly
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That wont happen, for several reasons;
Gameloft, which has a big amount of good games, hardly supports the Transformers, forcing us to find the games by other means.
A lot of games is only coded for crappy phones with their low-res screens, making them unplayable on a tablet with a larger resolution.
If you want an android device that can play the majority of the games available, you're better of getting a high-end phone ... its a sad world we're living in...
That said, there is a lot of games available, but some takes a lot of time to find.
One example is Order & Chaos... It took me 2 weeks before I actually found a version that works on the TF101, and once gameloft decides to update the game - who knows how long it will take before it will work again.
We have a thread here that lists the gameloft games currently known to work on our TF101's. The list itself isnt updated in quite a while, but the last few pages lists some more games.
I think the Prime forum got a similar thread.

Goatshocker said:
That wont happen, for several reasons;
Gameloft, which has a big amount of good games, hardly supports the Transformers, forcing us to find the games by other means.
A lot of games is only coded for crappy phones with their low-res screens, making them unplayable on a tablet with a larger resolution.
If you want an android device that can play the majority of the games available, you're better of getting a high-end phone ... its a sad world we're living in...
That said, there is a lot of games available, but some takes a lot of time to find.
One example is Order & Chaos... It took me 2 weeks before I actually found a version that works on the TF101, and once gameloft decides to update the game - who knows how long it will take before it will work again.
We have a thread here that lists the gameloft games currently known to work on our TF101's. The list itself isnt updated in quite a while, but the last few pages lists some more games.
I think the Prime forum got a similar thread.
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Thanks for the advice again
But honestly I don't play Gameloft stuff because I hate their shanenigans of making crappy coded games that don't even work the same on two phones with the same hardware.
I'm talking more about many of the indie games that have been popping up on the Market from Osmos HD, to Avadon and Canabalt among many others.

Its a hard choice but if you want gps and great wifi the original tf is the choice.
Documents on the go no problems for me.
If you root and use custom roms and overclock the performance difference at the moment does not justify the price.
Gaming thats a hard one some might say games dont work or hd games are usually released for the prime etc etc. But for me i play ps1 n64 gameboy etc with a ps3 controller on my tf101 i also play sims freeplay and a load of other games that i got direct from the market. You may not get all games but i think the best part of say 4-5 hundred games would be enough for anyone.
The ability to hook it up to the tv and play ps1 games with opengl (makes the old graphics look way better) alone makes it worth loving my android tablet.
Also when i had to decide between netbook and android tablet the winner for me was the tf101 because i can get 18hrs battery life most netbooks i have seen are lucky to last 6.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium HD app

I can watch videos fine on my transformer (I'm not really an avid video watcher who can ONLY watch things in super super HD, seriously, 720 is really good on a screen this small). My tablet is very useful because I mostly browse, read pdfs, and take notes. Sadly, I find that I'm using the keyboard less and less, since the only time I really use it is when I have to type up reports, and latex works better with a bigger screen so I don't even use the keyboard much then..

Has there been any ouya vs sheild talk?

I think the hard part is getting non PC people to have a PC, with a 650 or better nvidia GPU. And then you have PC people that just need an upgraded GPU. And is nvidia gonna do first party break the ice with a bunch of mini game or small and quick MMO or plan on setting up a special something for shield owners? And then you have people who don't really want the portability all that much and will likely buy the poor man's gaming console, the ouya, which should refressh it's hardware every year or two. And isn't nvudia inside the ouya to start off with? Nvidia could get something jumpstarted where the ouya would work in this equation somehow or be a host server for man, or all out line if the right components are there and up to the task.
my gnote2 is bigger than your puny iPhone.

I'm still not too sure about either, to be honest. My Asus Infinity with a Tegra 3, and a PS3 controller with the Sixaxis app, currently handles all of my Android gaming. The Tegra 4 will be in Android tablets soon, though I think the first tablet getting the Tegra 4 will be running Windows 8. I'm just not too sure, YET, if Project Glass will be worth the extra money...
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The ouya has a tegra 3 at 1.3ghz. The Shield has a 1.9ghz tegra 4. Significantly more power.
The shield running stock android means it doesnt need to stream from a desktop PC. With the OUYA also being android based I reckon it would be a fairly easy port to get an OUYA game running on the shield, either with a port of the game code to the shield or possibly a modded OUYA SDK. Dependant on how much source code is available for the Shield roms and OUYA roms it might be possible to run an ouya rom on the shield.
Windows 8 wont run on a tegra 4. Namely because windows 8 is x86 only and tegra 4 is ARM.
Windows RT might but there have been no new windows RT devices announced so none with a tegra 4.
Only tegra 4 devices I know of right now are the shield, the HP splitbook x2 and the NVidia demo phone and demo tablets sold to manufacturers to sample what the tegra 4 and 4i can do.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
The ouya has a tegra 3 at 1.3ghz. The Shield has a 1.9ghz tegra 4. Significantly more power.
The shield running stock android means it doesnt need to stream from a desktop PC. With the OUYA also being android based I reckon it would be a fairly easy port to get an OUYA game running on the shield, either with a port of the game code to the shield or possibly a modded OUYA SDK. Dependant on how much source code is available for the Shield roms and OUYA roms it might be possible to run an ouya rom on the shield.
Windows 8 wont run on a tegra 4. Namely because windows 8 is x86 only and tegra 4 is ARM.
Windows RT might but there have been no new windows RT devices announced so none with a tegra 4.
Only tegra 4 devices I know of right now are the shield, the HP splitbook x2 and the NVidia demo phone and demo tablets sold to manufacturers to sample what the tegra 4 and 4i can do.
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The OUYA actually has a 1.9GHZ tegra 3 T33 processor (supposedly better than the T30L which is what youll find in devices like the Nexus 7, HTC one and Asus pads) The OUYA development tool (referred to by the developers as the ODK) is easily obtainable from their website. When you download it and install it (it's an apk) it boots you into the OUYA interface, acting like a launcher controlling it with my nexus 7's touch screen was clumsy and un productive and I didnt have access to the app store but I believe it would be quite easy to gain access. I also installed the play station mobile app on my nexus 7 but since it is not an officially licenced device with access to it it locked me out. This was fixed by flashing a package from custom recovery. No doubt the same applies to the ouya market.
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Tetra 3 uses a cortex A9. Tetra 4 uses A15 which is about 50% faster at the same clock speed. So even with the ouya being 1.9ghz it still has less CPU power than the shield. Has a weaker GPU too.
Only points the ouya wins on are cost and dedicated developer support. There are probably more people hoping to make ouya specific apps than there are shield specific apps, a relatively minor point seeming as those apps should play nicely on either device anyway.
Ultimately you could still hook a shield up to a tv and pair a Bluetooth gamepad with it (maybe even an ouya one when they get around to selling them on their own) if you want a living room console, then unplug cable and go if you need a portable device. It just comes at a cost.

Wasn't contradicting your statement was merely correcting some misleading information.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

There is a lot of hope from both camps (Ouya and NVIDIA) that these "controller-based" products will really push for developers to support landscape-only devices and dedicated controller support. While Shield has the advantage of a touch screen available, both devices are really driving toward controller-only development.

I could see myself getting one of these. Not at launch but after a couple critical mass games and the one that gets more quality support for console like gaming. The ouya is potentially a GameCube successor and the shield has a lot of potential but are people really going to put their smart phones and tablets down for a dedicated but still portable console.
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@rbiter said:
I could see myself getting one of these. Not at launch but after a couple critical mass games and the one that gets more quality support for console like gaming. The ouya is potentially a GameCube successor and the shield has a lot of potential but are people really going to put their smart phones and tablets down for a dedicated but still portable console.
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While I was previously interested in the OUYA for some hard core android gaming on a tv, I've kind of lost interest due to the fact that its model was meant to attract developers looking to make a name for themselves meaning small scale AA games. While there's nothing wrong with producing opportunity for new developers, it does mean that a good portion of the content will not be worth your time atleast in its early stages. The Nvidia Shield not only has the power to handle anythjng the market can pushout for atleast the next two years, the OUYA is packing hardware which is already outdated.
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Jsusgarcia179 said:
While I was previously interested in the OUYA for some hard core android gaming on a tv, I've kind of lost interest due to the fact that its model was meant to attract developers looking to make a name for themselves meaning small scale AA games. While there's nothing wrong with producing opportunity for new developers, it does mean that a good portion of the content will not be worth your time atleast in its early stages. The Nvidia Shield not only has the power to handle anythjng the market can pushout for atleast the next two years, the OUYA is packing hardware which is already outdated.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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The ouya is supposedly getting new hardware every year. How they plan on doing that I don't know. It would be very nerdy and cool to unplug and drop a new SOC instead of buying the while console each time. And ouya seems to be off to a shaky start already with the controller and lag issues.
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@rbiter said:
The ouya is supposedly getting new hardware every year. How they plan on doing that I don't know. It would be very nerdy and cool to unplug and drop a new SOC instead of buying the while console each time. And ouya seems to be off to a shaky start already with the controller and lag issues.
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What I think they meant by that is that a new ouya with updated hardware will be released every year.
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Thanks to the easily exchangeable hardware of the ouya, I believe that we will see upgrade possibilities.
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Jsusgarcia179 said:
What I think they meant by that is that a new ouya with updated hardware will be released every year.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
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I think that is the way it will be, but if they designed it the right way it would be cool to just drop a new soc in and only have to buy a new ouya every 3 years or so. Upgrading just the hardware inside for $50 or so would be really cool on the wallet also.
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slainbybeats said:
Thanks to the easily exchangeable hardware of the ouya, I believe that we will see upgrade possibilities.
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what are you on about?
The ouya only breaks down into 4 components. Case, lid, motherboard and fan. Nothing is removable from the motherboard and its hardly worth keeping the case between upgrades (besides, case has negligible financial impact). Only way you can upgrade the ouya is swap the entire motherboard in one go, or basically just buying a new ouya.
Swappable SoC's won't work as ARM chips don't maintain a standard pin out. To swap from a tegra 3 to a tegra 4 even requires a new motherboard. Workaround is to use a computer-on-module but that would not be effective for the ouya. Drivers for different SoCs are all different too. There is no feasible way to switch between SoCs in the ouya.
Just expect new hardware revisions every year or 2 instead.
Until then. Ouya VS shield. Ouya only really wins out for cost and size, and its not as if the shield is big. Ouya apps can probably eventually be coerced into running on the shield and ouya controllers would also work with the shield. Shield is more powerful, more portable. Only thing the ouya has and shield doesn't is the touchpad on the controller (exposes itself as a Bluetooth mouse so there is one workaround, or pair an ouya controller with the shield, or emulate it on the shield touch screen).

I believe the upgrade path for an Ouya would be to keep your old controllers, and just get the base unit.
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I love the idea of Ouya, but with the Xbox One and PS4 coming out in the fall I don't see a need for it.
The shield wins for me because I love the idea that I can play my PC games anywhere in the house or even the backyard. I love the idea of being able to use it like any other Android device. I love the portability and the power that the shield offers and I love that I can actually plug the shield into any TV im play those games right to it. If I wasn't such a big Xbox gamer and just wanted something cheap to play then I would consider the Ouya, but that's not the case and I have been looking for something that's portable with counsel quality gaming for a while now and the PC streaming is just a huge bonus for me.
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The shield does seem to have a more serious gamer allure but at a higher cost. The ouya would get the all around enthusiast gamer and would be much better suited for family or friend fun. Though I don't see why the shield couldn't support multiplayer from one shield output to a TV. I am not a serious gamer anymore but the Xbox one probably won't ever be in my living room if they really do undermine the second hand market like that. Probably the same for the ps4 if they decide to go ahead and do it. Still very interested in getting a ps4 in a couple of years when ps3 starts to show it's age in blue ray movies. The ouya might pique my interest in the meantime if they have some meaningful games.
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stanglifemike said:
I'm still not too sure about either, to be honest. My Asus Infinity with a Tegra 3, and a PS3 controller with the Sixaxis app, currently handles all of my Android gaming. The Tegra 4 will be in Android tablets soon, though I think the first tablet getting the Tegra 4 will be running Windows 8. I'm just not too sure, YET, if Project Glass will be worth the extra money...
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