If the Tesla Motors saga is to be believed, this failure of local dealers to serve their respective markets is something that you should mention to your state legislators.

If you'd believe an Anonymous Coward's side of this story, then shipping with a gamepad and being marketed for use with a TV are remarkable because they are beyond the lowest common denominator for PC gaming. Is this AC right or just full of crap?

Then what is the proper term for Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and other desktop Linux distributions that resemble Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo more than Android?

Listing all Linux distributions in an application's "system requirements" would require excessive space. This means there's a need for a precise name for the set of Linux distributions that support Gtk+ and/or Qt userland as opposed to only the Android userland. Would Qt/Linux or Gtk+/Linux be more accurate?

It's still far less clunky than "Linux-with-a-GNU-userland" or "Linux-that-isn't-Android-or-embedded".

I need brevity because there are plenty of Slashdot users who repeatedly point to Google Play Store as evidence that there are plenty of games and other commercial apps "on Linux". So is there a shorter term for Linux-based systems that aren't Android or embedded?

It does when "free Linux-based OS with a multiwindow GUI" takes up the majority of a 50-character "Comment Subject" box. You need the "multiwindow GUI" part to distinguish the multitude of Linux distributions for desktop and laptop PCs from Android and from Linux distributions designed for servers.

I agree with you that it's not likely to be a big practical issue. Back when those games came out, the MHz race was still on; it's a cores race now, and cores require more rearchitecting of the engine. And once hardware comes out, there'll be a lot more pressure on Valve not to issue breaking patches for existing games sold when that hardware was still on shelves.

It's three of five now. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are fans of lockdown. OUYA and now Valve, less so.

I can think of three things that "free software friendly games" might mean: games that are themselves free software and free cultural works, games that are free software but require the purchase of mission packs (e.g. Doom, Quake III), or just games whose graphical complexity is low enough to run on a pre-Haswell Intel IGP (the desktop GPU with the most complete free driver). Which did you mean?

Alexey Pajitnov came from the Soviet Union and produced one of the most popular video game franchises ever, with ongoing sequels for nearly three decades and counting.

If I buy a typical retail game console, I can't run a game even if my team created it from the ground up, wrote every line of code, drew every sprite. Instead, I have to satisfy a console maker's arbitrary and expensive demands in order to do that. Unlike a typical game console, a PC or OUYA console lets me run a game that I do own.

It's a game changer because of perception. Unlike a typical desktop PC, these are designed from the ground up for the living room. Instead of a huge tower, they come in a sleek consumer electronics case. Instead of a mouse and keyboard, they come with a gamepad and encourage users to buy and connect more for couch multiplayer. And instead of having to build your own, they come with the convenience of being able to use out of the box.

David Wong of Cracked would agree with you. But are there documented cases of couch multiplayer being cut from a PC or console game so that the publisher can sell multiple copies to one household?

I'll show you more than "a single game". Street Fighter IV supports couch multiplayer, as does the (2 years delayed) port of Mortal Kombat (2011). So do a lot of the games on this page and on another page that nschubach pointed out. Look for indie and amateur games, as their developers are less likely to have console licenses to fall back on.