You Can Look Forward To A New Ouya Every Year

While we edge closer and closer to the Ouya’s release in June, a lot of news has been surfacing. Most of the time it’s feedback from developers who already have their consoles, letting the world know exactly what to exact from this potentially market changing product. While most of the news has been positive, this latest announcement from the Ouya developers themselves could be taken one way or the other.

CEO Julie Uhrman revealed yesterday that the Ouya will received refreshed hardware every year, with a new console releasing for the same price annually. Now, before you raise your pitchforks and torches, let’s hear her out. The Ouya’s Terga 3 processor is already a generation behind the recently announced Terga 4, which makes the Ouya outdated even before launch. This is exactly what annual Ouya releases will be aiming to combat. With a new release each year, the Ouya will ship with more powerful processor while maintaining the same price and considering that price falls below a thousand rand, it might not be as bad as you initially thought.

Having more powerful Ouya’s every year will allow developers to create more visually stunning titles for the console. Backwards compatibility will be on offer as well, but think of it as apps for the iPhone. Newer games might not always work on older Ouya models because of hardware constraints, so eventually it would be in your benefit to upgrade.

Uhrman and her team are banking on the low price to attract buyers to the console annually, which is a fair and smart bet in my opinion. However, the support the console receives will ultimately decide if gamers purchase a new Ouya every year. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean I’ll buy it if there aren’t any worth-while titles.