The Ouya made headlines last year as a slightly different take on Android as a gaming platform. Instead of powering a smart phone, it would form the brains and muscles of a home console, and a cheap one at that.
It's for those reasons and more that the Ouya was a smash success on Kickstarter, breaking all kinds of records and setting all kinds of precedents. But you what they say, about history repeating itself.
Just unveiled is the GameStick, from PlayJam. It's more or less the same thing as the Ouya, that being a machine that hooks up to your television and is also powered by Android. But instead of being yet another set stop box, it's simply a stick as the name implies. One that rests inside its controller when not in use.
The project is actually up and running at the moment, in a closed beta phase with working prototypes. But its creators need $100,000 to fund the full production hardware. And they’re using Kickstarter, naturally.
In just a day, they've already reached over $70,000 and is expected to their mark in very short fashion. But whether it gets 8.5 million dollars like the Ouya did at the end of its campaign remains to be seen.
For those interested, the console and controller can be nabbed for as little as $69, which does make it a cheaper alternative.
It's perhaps foolish to assume what the people behind that other platform are thinking right now, though it's a safe bet that they were not expecting such direct competition.
Jasper Smith, CEO of PlayJam, had this to say to GameIndustry:
"Ouya ran a fantastic campaign but it would be premature to assume that they will own the market with their offering… Competition is good and we're the proof."
