Ouya has announced in a blog post on its website, that it is dropping the requirement for all games to have a free-to-try option on its console.
“When we started OUYA, we originally decided against this,” wrote Bob Mills, in part. “Free to Try seemed like an obvious choice for an open platform. We knew it appealed to gamers, but it turned out many devs had trouble meeting the requirement, didn’t want to make a demo, or weren’t sure how to monetize their game.”
“So we found ourselves weighing one good thing against another. Do we support the awesome feeling of getting to try anything before you buy it, or do we make the pathway to publishing on the TV even easier for devs? It was a difficult choice.”
Mills said that for over a year devs had been saying the same things:
- It’s about choice. Give devs the freedom to choose. That’s openness.
- It doesn’t make sense, creatively, to put a demo in my game.
- Implementing demo content is not within our studio’s budget.
- I don’t really know how to implement a good demo.
“Giving devs the freedom to choose gives our gamers access to the best games available,” Mills added. “We’re clearing another roadblock in the pathway to publishing on the TV, and that means more great games will make it to OUYA.”
(via GamesIndustry)