OUYA Doesn't Need to Be Pure Android
The #Ouya Kickstarter has nearly crossed the US$5million mark.
I’ve read all the negative press, a lot of which was written before this weekends Android XBMC posts by Kieran Gutteridge and Jason Parker.
If you bear in mind that Apple apparently sold more than 2.7 million Apple TVs' in the first half of this year (http://goo.gl/K9ldI), a US$99 XBMC capable device which has the ability to run apps and games as well seems to me to have a good chance of being a success.
The main thing to remember is that users don’t care about APIs, they care about content and usability, so even if Ouya doesn’t support every API and doesn’t pass the Android CTS, as long as users get good content and games, and doesn’t have a UI that confuses people, it has the potential to be a success. The Ouya guys are working on the games, and XMBC is a great route to providing media content, and developers can write a launcher to replace any iffy UX issues, so I think the pieces are falling into place.
Yes, it could flop, but then again so could anything, and personally I think this has a better chance of succeeding than not.
[Declaration of interest; I’ve backed the project already]