The Kickstarter project has raised a grand amount over $8.5 million US dollars. The highest Kickstarter project to raise that much and the highest amount raised on the first day of a campaign. It set records and they promise to wow us. The game system's software will be Android-based and the hardware will use the nVidia Tigra 3 processor. They will have a store-front for all their games and all of them are promised to have at least a free-to-play demo if not be free-to-play it's self.
They have currently partnered up with:
- XMBC
- Square-Enix (Final Fantasy 3)
- OnLive (Streamed Gaming)
- Bandai Namco
- Tunein (Internet Radio)
- Robotoki (Human Element)
We here at PGD have started to get all console-excited ever since Francesco Lombardi and I finally got Free Pascal compiling for the Nintendo GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS handhelds. There was even talk of working on Nintendo Wii support. This was originally due to the Free Pascal team adding ARM processor support to the compiler. Francesco took to early work and prodding done by Jason McMillen (myself) and ran with it, redoing the entire code from which explored the ability for Free Pascal to target other platforms.
This new gaming platform is now capable of running apps made to run on Android devices as it's developed system software is built on Google's open source OS. This opens the door to any apps going onto it that the compiler it's built with is capable of building apps to run on Android. In our case that would be Oxygene for Java and possibly the Free Pascal compiler.
Free Pascal has been made ready to now target Android on a executable file and hardware level, however it will remain to be seen if the compiler can be made to work with the APIs and SDK that will be made available to those that backed the OUYA Kickstarter project under the developer edition reward.
On the other hand those that choose Oxygene for Java may have an upper hand in this scenario as it generates the Java byte-code that the Android platform is designed to run natively in it's operating system. The first attempt at writing games has been proven by the last PGD Challenge where at least 2 competitors have created and submitted games using Oxygene for Java and reportedly said it to be quite capable of using just about any Java-capable API.
We will know more about development for the OUYA when more information is released from them or when the dev kits start shipping in December of this year.
I know of at least one Pascal developer who has funded a developer edition, but I can't say who. Sorry guys.
You can check out the OUYA Kickstarter page at www.kickstarter.com.
The OUYA website is now live and there is contact information and a form where you can pre-order your OUYA gaming system for APril 2013 at www.ouya.tv.
IGN Reports About OUYA Partnerships & Developments
News Sources: Kickstarter, OUYA.tv, IGN, Twitter
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