Game Consoles' Sudden Push in Sanity
Danny is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
Ye Olde Technical Investors:
We're seeing lots of sensational news today. A kickstarter has raised over 1 million dollars on its first day that aims to disrupt the very business investors are betting on: the next generation of game consoles.
Trust the Investors?
With a title that name-drops as naturally as high school gossip does celebrities, investors are being quoted as saying the iPad is this generation's next console. Never mind that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) revealed the Nexus 7, provoking a ruckus at their own conference this year or that Android usage continues to climb in usage. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) does remain the hottie on which, in developers' eyes, consumers love to spend money.
You can trust that Apple won't be left behind, however, in the new mini tablet's space currently owned by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) through their Kindle Fire tablet. Given these gadgets and Android's open appeal for developers building cheaply, tablets of all sizes may indeed be a good candidate for an investor to prophesy the next generation's rectangular, thin console.
A threat looms on the horizon, though. Its mammoth growth has happened in a single day.
Evidently, A Million Dollar Idea
Meet the OUYA, a kickstarter that sits at nearly $1.5M and aims to explicitly "disrupt an established industry." What industry, you ask? Just that very one above, about which investors were confident: video game devices.
Rather than considering returns for investors, the project focuses on restoring a gamer-loved tradition: playing consoles at the TV instead of at the PC or with a tablet. Gamers and developers have made their message clear with the immediate support of the Android-based platform. This console's success means that every independent developer might sit alongside large publishers on the Google Play distribution channel.
If there's anything Sony (NYSE: SNE), EA (NASDAQ: EA), and Nintendo (NTDOY) have learned, it's the power of that broad market created by independent developers. Seeing these giants grasp for a bit of the indie pie may sound like irony to players or as if a company's late to the party to a worldwide studio president. With money, of course, it may be better to be late than to miss the fun altogether.
Regardless of how quickly they learn to adopt and wield it, they will be mere players on the Play and App Store platforms. It is those platform owners that stand to gain from everyone's moves in the console game.
dfavela has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.If you have questions about this post or the Fool’s blog network, click here for information.
