https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
This is a great concept. I love the idea of a cheap videogame console that can deliver quality (hopefully) content to badass man caves. Now, the developers themselves will make or break this thing, and of course there’s the matter of hardware. I’m not that concerned about the power though tbh, especially since it’s seemingly 100% open. I just love this idea so god damn much.
If game developers jump on this I could see it being awesome, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in regards to that. I don’t see this competing with the next gen consoles.
The open source nature of this could prove to be dangerous, as any user could turn it into something else and completely singlehandedly rip themself from the community. I can see it now. People would be souping up the fuck out of their Ouyas with extra up-to-date hardware, while demanding content that caters to their advance builds. Meanwhile, these same people are shunning the owners who use the vanilla specs who will undoubtedly be the majority.
This all sounds familiar.
I can only hope there’s some throttle as to what you can stack on top of it.
I notice that they’re making a big deal out of the ergonomics of the controller. It does look great. It also looks like a 360 controller. Kinda makes me wonder if Microsoft really nailed it that perfectly. Is there that little room for improvement for a controller design?
Wow,
Today the page shows:
13,970 Backers
$1,753,460 pledged of $950,000 goal
29 days to go
This just sounds amazing.
A console just for Indie games and Emulators, can’t freaking wait. 
Also love the controller and the use of colors instead of letters.
This all sounds awesome, but I’m a bit worried about the f2p model.
Someone needs to fix living room gaming. For all Valve has talked about it, they haven’t even been able to deliver a promised UI for over a year (even by Valve time, that’s really awful), let alone any hardware.
If this thing does it, great.
I’ve always seen the xbox controller as an unauthorized improvement to the dreamcast controller’s layout.
Oh man, this shit needs way more than just 2 million dollars to even start small time production.
this product is gonna fail harder than microwave drying a cat. the products requiring a home console like this can be done better using the products we already have like a iPhone or any modern android phone. Just connect those devices onto a big screen, get a bluetooth controller and there you have it.
a console for 100 bucks is just te same as using a apple tv with airplay.
the only benefits this will have is for the non (modern) smartphone users wich are a few in the gaming/gadget scene.
28 days to go and the cash hasn’t stopped flowing.
This is absolutely amazing. I don’t know if there was any advertising done beforehand, but people are just SWARMING the kickstarter page and the funding that has accumulated so far is astonishing. If all goes well, this will be a defining moment in the history of the video game industry.
It made 3 million dollars in two days. 28 to go. The people have spoken, your argument is invalid. Also, phones are still relatively closed systems with warranties that void with tampering and all that shit. This isn’t.
I’d be a lot more excited if they had some games for it. There are less than 9 months left before this thing is supposed to launch, and the only announcements we have are for a couple of ports.
Also, 3 million dollars is peanuts for a console. You’re seeing the reaction of a small, rabid group of people. They’re going to need to sell a lot of these things to woo anyone into making a real game for it. Like, a million at the bare minimum.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of an open living platform. Love it. But I can see this ending up as a $100 Android shovelware player pretty easily.
3 million in two days. 28 to go.
It will inevitably flatten out before time is up, yes, but it’s definitely not going to stop soon.
The point is that they aren’t well-capitalized (and Double Fine got almost 50% of their money in the first 24 hours, so it’s not like this is going to keep going at anywhere near the current clip). Even $50 million would be peanuts for a console. $50 million is less than Sony’s pre-launch marketing budget for the Vita. Plus manufacturing, distribution, customer service, operating costs…
Their plan may have workarounds to make up for the fact that they basically have no marketing budget, but the only thing I can see making this successful is several killer games at launch. And we don’t have any indication of that happening yet.
If there’s a tiny marketing budget and a small library of games, why would anyone buy it? And if the install base is (a very optimistic) 100,000 shortly after launch, why would anyone take the time to develop something cool for it?
I’m just being realistic about this, because it is exciting and it is easy to caught in the hype for this kind of thing. But they have some serious hurdles to overcome to make this thing something worth owning.
Your first error is comparing it to a Sony product, or a Microsoft product, or a Nintendo product. This is not the same kind of animal. The product in it’s very nature is not something that can really be advertised, as it’s whole edge over the competition is the fact that it’s so fucking open. The average consumer of course doesn’t realize how important that is, even the average gamer wouldn’t get it. Not until the right parties take advantage of it, which is the big risk. The library is far from small, for it can already run all existing android apps and games. Ouya specific products have yet to even surface. Apparently they are there, and being kept secret for some reason. It already has a huge pool of resources to draw from. Of course, phones already have access to all that shit anyway… you know what? Fuck it. This sums up all of my thoughts on the matter.
Again: no one is going make games for the thing if it doesn’t have a big install base. Hence, they either need some killer apps or a large advertising budget. They currently have neither.
I’m not impressed by a library of touch screen games at launch. At the very least those games are going to need to be ported properly to be worth playing. How many of those can we expect?
Library of shovelware and ports at launch = low sales. Low sales = fewer developers want to make good games for it = even fewer sales = even fewer new games.
The best thing this product has going for it is that there is going to be piracy and emulators out the ass. unfortunately, that will eventually put them out of business because it bypasses their online store where they get a fat 30% cut.
They need, need, need at least one or two great games that no one else has at launch. That’s a minimum.
I remain cautiously interested but won’t be backing it.
I have some hope for this. It sounds cool, and while it’ll never compete with anything for horsepower, some pretty neat games could come out of it. For the price it could give handhelds and even the Wii U a run for its money if it gets off the ground.
This is gonna flop. Or at the very most do mediocre.
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