The 8th generation console war (PS4, Xbox 720, Wii U, OUYA, Steambox) will be a multi-company battle, with the Steam Box, and the OUYA set to give the three traditional Shogun’s (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft) a run for their money.
We don’t know much about the SteamBox, but, we know plenty (if not everything) about the OUYA Android based console, and we’re going to answer a very important question today here at Geek Magazine, which is, how powerful are the OUYA’s graphics?
Let’s admit it, no matter how much indie developers and the modern hipster continue chanting the “gameplay over game looks” mantra, at the end of the day, some games simply need to look good to be considered good. While FTL (Faster Than Light) and Minecraft can get by on their SNES era art style, stuff like Far Cry and Crysis cannot.
And let’s not get into the whole “the OUYA will be a indie devs exclusive console” thing, because those devs are seeing a lot of success on mobile platforms, PCs and even HD consoles of late. They don’t need the OUYA. The OUYA needs them.
So, with those loose threads tied up, let’s check out the engine that powers this Android hot rod; the over clocked Tegra 3 processors from Nvidia. This baby is a 1.7 GHz 4-core APU (APU means both the GPU and CPU are on a single chip) that features a 12 core Geforce LP.
What those specs mean, is that in practical terms, the absolute best visuals this machine will be able to crank is the first Far Cry Game, and maybe the first Crysis game.
The OUYA will have better looking graphics than this
But not as good as this
Game’s will basically look like original Xbox titles on steroids.
So does this mean the OUYA will have bad looking games? No, this simply means they will falls slightly short (when at their absolute best) of the visual standards set by games such as God Of War 3, Halo 3 and Uncharted 2 and the likes. Though games with a cartoony art style, such as Sonic, Mario, Spyro and Ratchet&Clank will most probably sport high visual fidelity on the OUYA.
So, if the OUYA wants to be a truly successful console, it’ll need to adopt Nintendo’s “game play over game looks, with a lot of exclusives” motto. Or be left in the dust by the current and upcoming console generations.
Mohseen Lala
Mohseen is the native Yeti of Geek Insider, specializing in consoles, Apple tutorials, reviews and anything that's fun, geeky and worth writing about.
