We were thumbing through our press releases looking for something interesting. Things get a little slow around the holidays as companies push games but don’t put them out. We found the OTON Game Console. The developers have gone through some incarnations. We want to take a look at this curious effort for a console.
The Original OTON X
Their earlier attempt was a system that was going to procedurally generate games without programming. That project failed in crowd funding but they still have a site up for it. We are curious of what quality these games would have been if they were being generated without human input. Regardless it is certainly a rather interesting idea.
The OTON AyR Indiegogo
At $25,000 USD they have a very normal goal this time to just supplement PC setups. The AyR also acts as a projector, hence the name, so you can play games on walls, etc. With this new project it seems they learned not to aim too high.
Indie System Developers?
With the low cost of hardware and the free cost of operating systems we’re now seeing a new market. People are developing systems as normal developers make games. We will probably see many more projects like this that will sink or swim on marketing. That has been the biggest factor so far. We are seeing a cottage console development market centered around Linux.
The Opportunity that OTON and Others Represent
We think that it’s good for the industry, although a great many projects will simply fail. More competition always leads to better things. What is perhaps most interesting is that those reading this right now could be the literal console devs of the future. It’s an intriguing thought that is available with the combination of free operating systems and crowd funding.
