Your opinion on the idea of someone making consoles only for homebrew?

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I dunno if anyone ever asked this, but so far today we have game consoles where we buy games to play on it, but others use it for finding exploits to run homebrew on and such. But what if companies just made consoles and no games to go with it. Now community supporters must make the games they wanna play on the console. In this case, the console is completely open to user from day of purchase with no time used to find exploits or any such things, just buy and start developing.

This probably sound like a dumb thing to people but I was just curious. I know people make consoles to sell games to play on it. Is common and what currently is the norm of things. Not everyone buys consoles for that purpose, some buy it to get homebrew running on it, but of course that is a time consuming process of finding a exploit to run the homebrew on cause is security lock from the dev to prevent unauthorized content on the system. So if there was no time wasted on trying to enforce the heavy security on the console, people wouldn't need to use so much time on trying to remove it. But that also means welcoming piracy on their system, but then that also means why even make games, let the people make it themself.

I'm sure this has been thought of by some people or even actually put to reality, but would that actually be a market for people? As much as I don't like to admit it, it seem that people only care for exploits on consoles for piracy, homebrew is probably the least popular thing and maybe even after thought of what people think when a exploit is revealed. I just figured if there was no focus on piracy, how will that effect game industry.

 

[ihaveahax]

that's kind of what modern smartphones and tablets are for, aren't they? millions of people already have one, so you can reach a wide market developing for those. it's easy to do so, and you can start for free. (publishing is a different story)

 

[DinohScene]

Ouya was such a console.
Guess why it flopped.

 

[Deleted User]

Also, PCs serve the same purpose. Anyone can make a game for PC and release it, to the point where the notion of Homebrew for PCs doesn't even exist. The reason the homebrew scene has gotten more exploit-focused is due to the advent of not just smartphones and PCs, but open SoCs such as the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBoard, which are much more customizable than your average gaming system.

That being said, I miss having a scene focused on making small games and apps. I was into the Petit Computer scene while back when I was a lurker, and it was nice having all these Homebrew apps and games to mess around for a few minutes, even if they were kinda stupid. If anything, that was part of the fun of it. No one considered joke applications as a "waste of GitHub's server space;" heck, the code wasn't even hosted on GitHub at all. People just laughed it off and moved on.

I wasn't into the DS, PSP, or Wii scenes when they were active, but from what I could tell, they also had more of a focus on making cool apps and small games than Homebrew today does. It's a shame, too; Homebrew scenes seem like good ways for aspiring game-makers to get their hands dirty on. But maybe I'm just a bit old-fashioned and waxing nostalgic too much. Ah, well.

 

[AxlSt00pid]

Ouya was such a console.
Guess why it flopped.

I was thinking the exact same thing while reading the title of this thread.
Also that damn thing forces you to register a credit card!

 

[DinohScene]

Also, PCs serve the same purpose. Anyone can make a game for PC and release it, to the point where the notion of Homebrew for PCs doesn't even exist. The reason the homebrew scene has gotten more exploit-focused is due to the advent of not just smartphones and PCs, but open SoCs such as the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBoard, which are much more customizable than your average gaming system.

That being said, I miss having a scene focused on making small games and apps. I was into the Petit Computer scene while back when I was a lurker, and it was nice having all these Homebrew apps and games to mess around for a few minutes, even if they were kinda stupid. If anything, that was part of the fun of it. No one considered joke applications as a "waste of GitHub's server space;" heck, the code wasn't even hosted on GitHub at all. People just laughed it off and moved on.

I wasn't into the DS, PSP, or Wii scenes when they were active, but from what I could tell, they also had more of a focus on making cool apps and small games than Homebrew today does. It's a shame, too; Homebrew scenes seem like good ways for aspiring game-makers to get their hands dirty on. But maybe I'm just a bit old-fashioned and waxing nostalgic too much. Ah, well.

Joke applications are nice projects from people.
It shows creativity and helps them learn to code.

You should've seen the original Xbox scene, that one was amazing.
Wii has had a fuck ton of homebrew much like the DS due to the relative ease of hacking it and the millions of them being sold.

I was thinking the exact same thing while reading the title of this thread.
Also that damn thing forces you to register a credit card!

A console targeted for android games where people could make games for.
It fell into the shadows of obscurity and imho, it's best to be left there.

Not only that but an android console wouldn't survive amongst the big three, let alone even compete.
Android hardware gets outdated pretty much yearly, say bi-yearly for sure.
That means that people would have to get a new Ouya iteration every 2 years to keep up with the current trend.
And knowing people, I highly doubt they'd get a new Ouya console every time.

 

[ov3rkill]

Best platform for this would be Android. You could design one with controllers and graphical prowess for games and such. Then again, it's cheaper to just buy a DS4 or any controller peripheral for your smartphone.

There's also Raspberry Pi if that's your thing. Basically, since we're talking about homebrew, it can be on any platform.

 

[sarkwalvein]

GP32 and a fuckload of portable consoles afterwards say hi.

 

[FAST6191]

Phew, thought I might have hallucinated the Gamepark family.

Anyway the demise of the DS and PSP scenes, and general failure to launch of the 3ds one, when android and IOS rose up tends to say to me that money is important in this, and if that was not enough then see also crowd begging and crowd funding sites and the role they play today in certain things. As no credit card company, bank or whatever cares to make low value transactions easy that means whatever homebrew company tries it on (though I would prefer a homebrew design a la DVD players but we will leave that for now) would have to build up an infrastructure to handle it and that is not a cheap endeavour.

 

[Taleweaver]

But what if companies just made consoles and no games to go with it. Now community supporters must make the games they wanna play on the console. In this case, the console is completely open to user from day of purchase with no time used to find exploits or any such things, just buy and start developing.

What will happen is that the definition of what defines as a console will shift so the device in question won't qualify as being a console. Or even more cynical/realistic: the word 'console' in itself somehow implies a closed nature.

It's certainly not a dumb thing, but it's done time and time again, all to little or no commercial success. Let's see...

-anything running windows, android or iOS. This generally gets dismissed because it has applications that aren't games and aren't designed around games
-raspberry devices get dismissed because they don't come with preinstalled games. (unless there are raspberries being sold with preinstalled games/emulators. In that case: they're just being ignored)
-open handhelds like the ngage, xperia play and (more recent) the gpd series are dismissed as consoles because you can hold them in your hand
-steam machines are dismissed because...erm...why are steam machines dismissed again? Because their horrible price/quality ratio?
-the ouya was exactly that: an open ended console. It flopped because it lacked quality games. The nvidia shield console probably as well, but I don't know how it fares/fared.


So...I really hate to bring the news, Sonic, but the idea of an open console is a pipe dream. It seems like a great idea from a gamer's perspective, but that's the problem: in order to succeed it has to be a great idea for ALL the perspectives. Open endedness means it's also open for piracy and (perhaps even worse) deregulated games. And for AAA studio's, the chances of making a profit is just too much of a risk (and let's face it: you're not going to pay an army of programmers from your own pocket if you can't expect a solid return on that investment).
The piracy argument speaks for itself, but the deregulated games thing is something less talked about. Ever wondered why games on android and (to a lesser degree: iOS) are priced as they are? Because it's mostly deregulated. There's far more competition out there, so in order to make a buck, people price their products less than the competition. In closed environments, the big three not only check for quality but also limit the amount of entrees (and I guess also arrange prices). This steadies the market, allows for larger profits and (as a consequence) attracts more AAA-publishers to build these games. And in the end, the success of a console has always been by the presence of "killer apps" (meaning: the games you buy the games for to begin with). Consoles with open markets probably still have to see the first real "killer app" for their system.

 

[The Catboy]

Ouya was such a console.
Guess why it flopped.

Bad marketing with a CEO who knew nothing about gaming.
I am pretty sure if they were properly managed they could have done a lot better.


There are several systems made just for homebrew and emulation, they just never seem to make into big stores like Best Buy, Wal*Mart, Target, ect.

 

[Deleted-355425]

atari box will be good for this idea.

 

[Veho]

Technically speaking the Raspberry Pi is a platform made entirely for homebrew.

 

[RattletraPM]

Bad marketing with a CEO who knew nothing about gaming.
I am pretty sure if they were properly managed they could have done a lot better.


There are several systems made just for homebrew and emulation, they just never seem to make into big stores like Best Buy, Wal*Mart, Target, ect.

You know you failed to advertize a product when you literally tell everyone "there's nothing special about this [console's] board".
(And yes, if any of you didn't know, that really happened: )

Spoiler

Anyways, yeah - there's already quite a number of homebrew-focused systems out there but they never really get outside niche markets; the first two that come to my mind are the Pandora/Pyra and GP2X. Such systems never really become big hits because of three main reasons: lack of exclusives, virtually no advertizing and little to no user-friendliness (for the last one, most of those are linux based and, while I personally love linux-based OSes, most people shiver just at the thought of using the shell to do anything, which isn't exacly user friendly)

 

[Seliph]

Uhh...
A computer?