Frag, what was the name of that iOS Turn based strategy game site you mentioned (last podcast?).
Just got an iPad and wouldn't mind giving it a peek.
Cheers.
Pocket Tactics , run by Owen Faraday.
http://www.pockettactics.com/
Literally the only iOS game blog you need. If there is something so good that it's worth mentioning outside the strategy space, he'll bring it up. Owen's writing is (as we mention) superb.
Regarding the Ouya-I think I made it pretty clear at times that there is demand for a vertical gaming appliance offering offbeat games from independent developers, due to the way that the space is poorly managed by the downloadable areas of the big three console hardware vendors. If there is one thing that everyone should have learned in tech by now is that most people vastly prefer focused devices doing narrow things very well over general purpose devices that are mediocre at some things and merely good at others.
However, Ouya isn't that device. Their business plan is undeveloped and questionable. Their product and engineering goals are barely more than simple prototypes. All the Hard Shit(tm) about designing this kind of system-namely the software, human computer interaction testing, and the network service implementation-are basically answered by "We'll use Android!" despite that not being any kind of substantive answer to base a business model on. Not the least of which is that the mobile games market-which is going to play a critical role in Ouya having anything to play on it- is moving away from the exact kind of business model and experiences that the device wants to deliver.
Starting a new business is very hard, and very expensive. I think the Ouya team went ahead with crowdsourcing funding too early before they had their proposed product realized, and I believe their goals are too ambitious, not to mention apparently constantly growing as they get more and more preorders.
Ideally the solution to this would be some kind of firmware upgradable Windows 7/8 core with a steam-based front end and store that lists games that pass some kind of crowd and developer based certification for games from the bigger store on the device. Unfortunately Microsoft isn't in the business of having access to their Win32 API sets as a a "dumb pipe" provider, so the closest you can get to that is something that people build themselves out of a general purpose machine, which totally misses the point of a vertical device completely.
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