OUYA is a new game console for the TV, powered by Android. We've packed this little box full of power. Developers will have access to OUYA's open design so they can produce their games for the living room, taking advantage of everything the TV has to offer. Best of all, OUYA's world-class controller, console, and interface come in one beautiful, inexpensive package. All the games on it will be free, at least to try. - OUYA This is has blown up insanely fast. In just 8 hours they met the 950 thousand dollar Kickstarter goal. It is now funded $3,500,000 dollars. It's like a PC in that indie developers can make great games, and takes the social media aspects of a console and jumbles it together in a whole lot of awesome. All of this for ~$100. It's almost too good to be true. What are your thoughts on this? Update: Mojang is considering bringing all of their games to this new platform. Spoiler “If OUYA delivers on the promise of being the first true open gaming platform that gives indie developers access to the living room gaming market, yes that is a great idea. We will follow the development of OUYA and see how it resonates with gamers. I could see all current Mojang games go on the platform if there's a demand for it.” – Mojang (developer of Minecraft) Kickstarter:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
Gamasutra: Ian Fisch's Blog - OUYA, the Android console - naivete at work? I don't know how I feel. If I had an extra $100 lying around I would probably pick it up.
I'm surprised that the console is only slightly larger than a Rubiks Cube.....how the hell do you fit a hard drive in that? I would love to see this come to life, considering I'm sick of paying $60 for shitty games...
Side note: this was the largest kickstarter project ever, in terms of first day donations. I'm pretty sure donations are somewhere around $4,000,000 at this point.
"Revolutionary", I don't think so. Everything available on this is available on systems you already have. The only thing I'd probably use it for is emulation, and even then, with the specs we've seen, I can't see it being able to run anything past PS1. On top of that, it isn't even as powerful as the current gen of consoles, so you're just looking at a decently powerful media centre that can run some low end games.
What you're missing is, the fact that they're allowing hackers and modders to use the system to their liking, which means they'll probably find ways to make this 10x more powerful, almost like a PC.
What you're missing is that means nothing to game developers. You can't develop for a system with the assumption that its consumer base is going to change the system. The counter-point is developers do that all the time for PCs. The difference is PC's already come with all sorts of different standards. Some are high end right off the bat and others are cheaper priced and low end rigs. This forced fragmentation makes developers have to put in low-medium-high graphics modes for their games to support the average consumer base who aren't upgrading their rigs. With the Ouya it is a home console meaning it will ship with the same specifications universally. Therefore developers have to design to the console's packaged specs which as neo pointed out not up to current gen levels. Now the reason I brought up On Live earlier is because this kind of technology can allow for games to be "streamed" to the console. This means you can be playing games on their highest settings because your technically playing a game on a much better spec'd computer and your interactions are streamed to you. The console could also play app store like games. Anyway, all of this is still young in development so we'll see what kind of support it gets in due time.
I backed relatively early on and am still waiting for mine, so I don't have any input yet on how the thing is to use. But I think it's interesting to look in particular at how this worked out as a kickstarter venture, amidst the very mixed opinions people have of the site itself and particularly the projects which arose during the bubble that OUYA was definitely part of. Basically, I think it's worth noting that, right from the start, they said they'd start shipping in March. Now granted, in the end it turned out to be the tail end of March, but they still made their initial shipping date promise without a single push back. In the grand scheme of Android kickstarter projects (ahem*pebble*ahem), that's actually pretty good. They're also being pretty good about keeping us supporters updated on shipping. After the initial hype, there were quite a few skeptical articles and voices. Which is to be expected, and tbh is a good thing in many ways since the hype needs to be balanced with a decent amount of questioning about what they're actually going to do, and how they're going to go about it. I was quite willing for the entire thing to fall through when I pledged, since that's what backing a kickstarter project is: an investment in an idea, not a preorder. I think if more people understood that then certain misguided complaints wouldn't have been as prevalent during the initial bubble. But either way, I was still obviously a little dubious as to how it'd actually pan out. However, I'm impressed with their attitude thus far, and it at least seems like they're in this for the relatively long haul. How they act after retail release (~June) and following hype dying down will be more telling, but I'm already somewhat reassured by the attention they're paying to the important bit: the rollout, after they've already collected that cool ~$6m. Tbh I can honestly see myself just putting Cyanogenmod or some other custom Android variant on there and using it as an HTPC (since that's what I was actually looking for when the OUYA caught my eye), and even if so I don't feel cheated since it's a good price for the spec compared to equivalent Chinese Android HTPC options. But I'd quite like the gaming side of things to actually come through. Quality control issues with the controller are one of my main concerns now, as the current recipients don't have the nicest things to say about build quality and consistency. Apparently the battery covers don't always fit seamlessly so the circle surrounding the right stick isn't always perfectly smooth. As someone who Ogre twitches with the regularity of a tourette's sufferer, this will annoy the hell out of me and I'll definitely have to sand it down if mine is like this. Game library needs some serious weight added to it as well. It's an interesting experiment in gaming development and distribution, and if you didn't have things like Steam Greenlight and the XBLA indie sectors already in place I think it' be a much better bet. But still, worst comes to worst it flops as a platform and I end up with a capable HTPC. I'm happy to ride this rollercoaster.
So I finally got my OUYA. Gotta say, build quality and design is nicer than it looked on the video. It feels solid, as does the controller, though the triggers are a little flimsy feeling. The most noticable thing is the latency with the controller (thank you, crappy Android bluetooth stack) which lends more weight to my idea of using this primarily as an HTPC rather than a gaming machine. Still, gonna give some games a whirl and see how it actually performs.
Funny tidbit of information: My phone (HTC One X+) is better than the OUYA. It runs with the exact same processor (Nvidia Tegra 3) but has access to anything on Google Play instead of the lackluster OUYA store. I could potentially even purchase a $25 bluetooth controller and hook up my phone to the TV to have the full experience.