Yeah, Android usually places too many layers of abstraction between stuff, and most people complain about the emulators and a lot of games not really having the greatest input response. Though a lot of the complaints might be device-specific.

Android is probably the best to get something up and running very quickly with a large selection of software early on, so there's little work for them to do, and they get a fair about of ease of use and consistency (compared to standard linux, or even a lot of windows software) compared to other options, which simply don't have the software library.

On the other side of things, Android has a lot of design choices catering to small, low power, portable devices, that really make it unpleasant for use on a desktop. Lot of trade-offs to stuff like stability, responsiveness and performance for the sake of battery life. And the same goes for the interface being pretty specifically for small touch screens. Most of Android and Android software is unfit for a set top box TV device.

Also, a more than capable media/low end games PC that can run windows or linux could be made for around $300. Something that can do games pretty well (medium graphics settings on modern games) can be made for $500. This thing would have to be like $150 or less to really see a place in the market, I think. This will also be in direct competition for some people with the Roku, WDTV, etc line of set top devices which are far less powerful and have limited to no gaming capability to what the Ouya should do, but have a lot of common functionality people like when in front of the TV, which Android doesn't seem to have normally Let's hope the built in firmware of this supplements it with some decent home/internet media streaming stuff that's reasonable to use.

It will also need way more and way better games than are available on Android. Especially ones more appropriate for traditional console controls, and for those with onscreen controls, it will need to COME WITH a button press -> screen press mapping utility, probably with profiles for common, popular games. You can hope developers will come to the console in the future, but you need to have a lot of or very compelling stuff up and available right away on launch.

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