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Ouya Android Console Blows Past Kickstarter Goal
mikejuk writes with a winner for quickest follow-up in a while as the Ouya console managed to raise over $2 million in a mere eight hours. From the article: "On the surface it all sounds like a really good idea. The OUYA games console is planned to be an open competitor to the likes of Xbox and PS3. It seems so good that it has been crowd funded to the tune of $1 million — but why exactly is it needed? There must be a good reason — after all the wisdom of crowds is never wrong. The simple answer seems to be freedom. The company claims that you can do what you want to the machine. A CyanogenMod port would allow you to do what you like to the OS and it wouldn't void your warranty. You can hack the hardware or software. However, it is important to note that this isn't open hardware. ... In the same way the software seems to be open and yet controlled. ... The Kickstarter page says 'When we say, "open" we mean it. We've made many decisions based on this philosophy:..' But it isn't Open Source. And yet it is so much better than the alternative. Perhaps this is a sign of just how desperate we all are to get away from the control of the big console manufacturers, that we will fund anything that sounds even slightly reasonable. The walled gardens of Apple, Sony and Microsoft no longer seem the warm and welcoming places they once did (if they ever did)"
Issues not raised on yesterday's post; the console will require a significant number of binary blobs just to function, and it's really unclear whether or not it will actually be DRM free. Anyone remember Indrema?
That's got to be a serious contender for the record of fastest funded project on Kickstarter in the category of nearly a million dollars... But anyway, I hope this means we'll get to see what they come up with - a 99 dollar console is just about in the range of 'sure, I'll bite - see what it's like' in terms of risk to the consumer.
This is the equivalent of hooking a tablet to your television. You'll have access to the same Android games that every smartphone and tablet has, assuming that the app even supports a controller.
Yep. 100%. The big manufacturers are shit and add DRM to games. Of course people want competition. The question is, how much can Ouya really do, and how out of date/not will the hardware be by the time it's released? If the hardware sucks (binary issues, etc), it might not even be a competition for android handsets.
Where is the innovation here? The fact that it is an open platform? This isn't a consumer product either, it is for hackers and developers who make up 1% of the consumer market share for video games (who are also the idiots who funded this project). I don't see anything spectacular coming from this, except maybe a good marketing campaign with all the money they've raised.
As a game developer I see this machine as just another source of piracy. I imagine most users will get it because they know they will not need to pay for a game. Is there a good excuse for a "hackable" console device other than being able to do piracy of multiple types of content?
Scanning the title I thought they got a Kickstarter project for creating an Android command terminal app that would allow you to run standard GNU/BSD tools like grep, find and sort without rooting the phone. Would be really nice to have if you can use an external keyboard with it.
I read a big blog post the other day going on about why this was a scam, is it still a scam or has our thinking changed?
>after all the wisdom of crowds is never wrong
Really? Or was that sarcasm?
Here are the problems I foresee:
1) They're either selling the hardware at cost or taking a loss at $99. Big console manufacturers make it back on $60 games. It will be really tough to make it off 30% of 99c games.
2) Storage, 8 GB(minus OS space) is really low, and you don't want to be downloading from the cloud all the time. XBox gets away with a 4GB model because it has a DVD drive. Throw in a SD card slot atleast or a cheap SSD.
3) Hardware: The hardware seems woefully inadequate. Tegra 3 is okay for now but in 2013 when they actually launch? Also, it's not a good thing to upgrade hardware even every year because that will fragment the games, so that hardware at launch is a very important baseline.
4) And the last big thing: PATENTS. The big players and patent trolls will be all over this company by the time it even sees minimal success. With the controller looking very similar to the existing ones, expect a huge patent attack.
Anyway, nice to see an underdog coming up in the console games, but it's hard to understand why Google can't make something like this. They already have Google TV and they release something like the Nexus Q at $299?
I threw my $99 behind the project. Hopefully it turns out to be a fun system. That's a hell of a lot less than I paid for either my phone or my Playstation3. I don't expect to be playing Uncharted on the thing at that price... I just expect to play something comparable to what I have on my phone. My kids play iPod games for hours on end, so this console will see use one way or the other.
Big game companies don't want consoles being easier to hack for easier game piracy. This may shy away some of the more serious game makers. On the other hand, MMO, RTS and other such games can finally find themselves in the console world.
Yes, a brand new project with little to no details, no actual work done so far, no actual design just a theory ... is going to blow away the entrenched big game platforms which have all spent hundreds of millions of dollars into ACTUAL research rather than 'this dude I know said he'd totally buy a android game console'.
What just happened is that a whole bunch of people just gave some random guys on the Internet a cool million dollars which will be squandered away because they all just got scammed.
While Kickstarter is a nobel idea, its implementation is retarded and knowing multiple projects on there personally, I can safely say that in my anecdotal experience, they are ALL scams due to the more or less complete lack of anyone bothering to determine anything about the projects before hand. There is no validation at all done before hand. Unless the two line summary of the idea is clearly not possible, it'll get through. One project I'm thinking off has literally 10 different peer reviewed scientific papers stating flat out their theory is wrong and why it can not happen that way given the current laws of the universe. The project is to create life from lifelessness using a synthetic compound with special sauce that 'life loves to start on' ... the synthetic compound ... its just C60. Yes, buckyballs are the key to making life in the universe. If you believe that, I'll be happy to direct you to the project so they can steal your money too, I've personally got a fuckton of ocean front, commercially zoned realestate in Arizona currently valued at 3 billion dollars an acre, I'll sell it too you for $1 total, and throw in a bridge across san francisco bay, think of the money you could make on tolls!
--BitZtream
I think people like the convenience of consoles, mainly. Turn them on, and bang, you're playing in a moment. The locked-in hardware means that everything you run on it will be compatible, or updates will be auto-installed.
However, we've gotten sick of the console-makers' sense that somehow they OWN us as customers, and can reach further and further into our lives to control the console experience downstream.
If I mod my console, that's MY BUSINESS, not the hardware-sellers. I don't think anyone would object to the developers saying "ok then that voids your warranty" - that's fair. But when they push updates that then (pretty obviously deliberately) break modding, brick systems, and contrive to rope us back into their definition of what we should be doing with their systems, we resist and look for alternatives.
Which is why I hope this works, but its main impact will be in policy, not product. It's a vote against the proprietary walled-garden mentality of the big hardware makers. PERHAPS they'll see that a console player just wants to play the damned games, not become part of the dev's 'family'.
-Styopa
Hey guys, have you ever heard of this open platform where you can install whatever software you want, plug a controller into it, and even attach it to a television? It's called a laptop.
There must be a good reason — after all the wisdom of crowds is never wrong.
[[citation needed]]
[[no, seriously, citation so very, very needed, more than any citation has ever been needed in the history of this running joke about Wikipedia's near-fetishistic demand for citations]]
Is for C64 and Apple ][ emulators.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Next up: An Android Powered DVR with CableCard support.
Hey I can dream, right?
A CyanogenMod port would allow you to do what you like to the OS and it wouldn't void your warranty.
Isn't this the last thing you want in a console? The whole point is to give developers a closed, controlled, static environment upon which to write their software. If you allow the masses to do whatever they want with the console it will make difficult to determine potential software sales too. How many of these consoles can still even run the games? How many are running FOO/OS 0.8?
Seems like they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
$2 million all for the price of a flashy presentation. Let me say this again, they just made $2 million in DONATIONS with 0 requirements to actually bring this device to market. Show of hands, how many people remember the Phantom console?
And people wonder where their money goes and why they are in so much debt...
I agree that the console market needs to have more open source contenders, but guess what, they HAVE contenders! There are plenty of open source / open hardware solutions that you can even build yourself! These solutions come with a variety of software options including Ubuntu and Android. Heck there are even a few portable handheld open consoles available. The difference is that these are actual devices for sale and not a list of shiny specs with no solid strategy for being profitable, especially at the $99 price point they mention.
One of these days I need to make a flashy shiny kickstarter presentation with a lot of loaded promises just so that I can cash out and retire early...
Sounds like a Win-Win situation to me. Once you have the hardware, people can Kickstart projects to make software and games for it.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
This is sort of a recurring theme in a lot of Kickstarter projects -- why did this particular project need to go to Kickstarter?
If you look at their pitch video, clearly no expense was spared getting the Ouya to its current point. Fancy office space, dozens of designers/developers, Macs for everyone, etc. Somebody has pumped serious cash into this venture. So why do they have to beg common people for a mere million bucks to get this thing off the ground? Were they just going to give up if they didn't get the money? Somehow I doubt that.
I've never seen anyone raise that particular question about this project. They obviously have some deep-pocketed investors, so why do they have to beg for money from a bunch of regular Joes who will certainly feel the financial impact if this thing never comes to fruition?
As a backer, I'm not really sure if i'm interested in purchasing a product like this. Yet I'm very eager to see what happens with it. Despite fragmentation, android as a platform is somewhat of a standard, and I'm sure that, after seeing this, other manufacturers will attempt to launch similar and compatible devices. So, at the end of the day, if just an interesting enough library of console-style games is created for Android, this could as well be a revolution.
It's an underpowered box that will be laughed out of the market because It's so underpowered and stupid that any Phone will be better than this box by the time it's released
Any phone, even the bargain-basement $100 phones that Virgin Mobile and other prepaid carriers sell? And would such a phone include a Bluetooth gamepad, or would games still rely on thumb swipe gestures?
'Wisdom of the crowds' as a principle requires that everyone choose independently, not knowing what other people choose. This is wisdom of the mob. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds#Four_elements_required_to_form_a_wise_crowd
Why you would want to play a press button X now to make the movie continue game I am not sure.
Yet people play a press buttons X, Y, and Z in the displayed sequence to make the song continue game. Such games go by the titles Parappa, Dance Dance Revolution, Amplitude, and Rock Band.
From their FAQ:
"We have begun work on the user interface and software."
Begun? Wouldn't that come first? I mean, if you're going to run into legal issues, that's where it would be, right?
At a glance it seems legit, but on rereading, I had to wonder this myself:
This has a lot of "too-good-to-be-true" tempered by some things to make it seem reasonable. But with the promises made, I'm not sure. "Estimated Delivery: March 2013" is awfully soon to manufacture a console with presumably no prior hardware development experience. Do they have all their contracts already lined up? Is their software already developed? Just look how long it took to get the OpenPandora out.
All of this starts making you wonder "wait, is this really legit?" I certainly can't say it's not, but it seems either naive or too good to be true.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Given the lack of fighting games on PC apart from the major-label Street Fighter IV and the indie MUGEN, and the complete absence of party games in the style of Mario Party, I'd say major labels have found their own reasons to avoid the PC for some genres.
I like the concept, I see a couple of potential flaws though =\
My biggest thing is yeah I play the $.99 games on my phone or tablet when I'm away from any 'real' gaming devices (i.e. my desktop, or my laptop). I don't know that you could really draw me to dedicate a TV to playing angry birds... to me the $.99 games are secondary to whatever it is I am actually doing (watching tv, working, reading slashdot, taking a bathroom break =D ). If the quality of game we get is along those lines, it wouldn't be that enticing because I already have *that* device like 10 times over. Alternatively if there are some free to play games on like on steam (I'm looking at you Tribes) that are well made, and could be played to their fullest without paying a cent - it could be worth it. Certainly if steam jumped on board with this, it could be big for both sides.
Another issue that I have is the open-ness itself. If the device is that open, then you'll have people choosing their flavor of non-standard OS for the device, games being released not being compatible with the non-standard OS. Game developers not wanting to put any time and effort into testing on anything other than the base OS. Game developers stop making games for it altogether due to the amount of support issues from people using the device with a non-standard OS and it fades into the sunset. On the other hand, you could have a system that is so easy to make awesome games for that the big dogs might feel a bit of a hit. This could really be a game changer. You would end up seeing the other consoles (already intrenched, with internet based game delivery already possible) releasing games with the same structure and the entire game marketplace shifts from large up front purchases, to recurring purchases over an infinitely variable amount of time.
Time will tell, all in all I am glad they got the funding they needed and I'd probably buy one when it came out because lets face it, it just plain looks awesome.
I can tell that although Americans buy a lot but this is not true for other countries.
How much of this is because a lot of countries didn't have paid apps for the first year or so that Android Market was in operation? Lack of support for paid apps in some countries has driven a lot of Android application developers to either A. derive revenue from ads instead of payments, especially after the success of Rovio's Angry Birds, or B. handle their own payment processing for unknown-source APK downloads.
It took three years for the PlayStation 3 console to be pirated, and I seem to remember that that didn't start until after Sony had already removed Other OS support. The Ouya console, on the other hand, comes with its devkit.
Not all games support controllers, but 'higher end' ones do. I have three in particular - Max Payne, Shadowgun, and Dead Trigger. The graphics are pretty good - not much below current-gen consoles, actually. So long as more and more games support gamepads like that, I can see a niche for the Ouya.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
...will not purchase that product, but I can't wait to see how spectacularly it fails. ;D
Games that actually use that Tegra3 have to have textures and other art assets that take up space. I have 4 of the big 'Yay Tegra3' games for Android - Max Payne Mobile, Shadowgun THD, Dead Trigger, and Dark Meadow. Every one of them had a lengthy post-'install' download of around 1 GB each. That'd fill up over half that 8GB space.
I'd figure an SD card slot, or even an external USB drive connection, would be necessary in practice. Or you'd be limited to smaller games and one or two big ones, period.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
One of these days someone is going to post a project that generates millions and then not offer a product to market, I have a feeling this might be one of them.
Sure, someone might be able to slap together an android powered prototype and ship it to project contributors to appease them that "something" was accomplished. Of course the box probably won't work well or as proposed.
But at what point does a kickstarter project be declared fraud? What are the ramifications of taking millions from contributors and not being able to deliver a product? What about not delivering a product for the price-point suggested, or not having the features expected, or any number of many many things that could change from the original proposal? What about delivering a product that nobody wants or doesn't generate revenue? People are buying into the idea of a $99 android game console, what happens when its shipped as a $299 under powerd crap-box, if its even delivered at al?
There are, or course, no ramifications which is why crowdfunding is probably one of the dumbest ways to waste money offered on the web (right up their with buying Carbon offsets). Straight from kickstarter.com "Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project." There is just a bunch of wordage about "responsibility" and "open communication with backers", but I mean, come on, once your credit card has been charged forget about any active involvement or due diligence into expecting your money is being responsibly utilized. There is ZERO creator accountability on Kickstarter, just a lot of hopeful promises and finger crossing. Not saying all Kickstarter projects are scams, but I am sure there are more then a few in progress at the moment.
I do, however, applaud anyone that can find a way to separate stupid people from their money. This is capitalism in its purest form. I just think the bubble is going to burst when some high-profile project generates millions and does not deliver, which is going to happen eventually or is already in progress.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Once the once potentially great console starts to gather momentum , gathering the interests of investors, larger game studios and so forth. Once money is on the cards the ideals of a completely open and hackable console will slowly start to become less important.
Somebody has to make money from this and to stand a real chance of success it has to have the backing of major game studios. The console will need some killer apps , maybe even exclusive titles. Without it this will end up just a hackers dream. I imagine the first things that will get ported will be emulators such as Mame, WinUAE etc. In the end it will just be a glorified GP32x / Pandora that plugs into your TV with a few shitty ports of TuxRacer and a ton of casual games like Super Angry Tortoise Catapault Brothers!
Still I would love to be proven wrong and we have a very real competitor to the big boys!
N...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Slashdot apple fanboys dissing sony/microsoft and ouya's limited openness..... lol.
Mod me troll because I'm right and it looks bad on you. If you mod me down, it makes your apple "open" as soon as I am forgotten.
If Nintendo didn't require you to be an A tier developer with blockbuster games already in your stable
Think of it from Nintendo's point of view. In 1983, shelves were filled with low-budget me-too games that clearly fulfilled Theodore Sturgeon's 1958 revelation about 90 percent of works in a genre or medium. This almost killed the living room video game industry in 1983. If you haven't proven that you can finish a commercial game above the 50th percentile of quality, why should Nintendo let you see its trade secrets?
they have geared their developer's licensing to poach developers from other consoles.
Why do you think only games for other consoles count as "relevant video game industry experience" (as warioworld.com puts it), not commercial games for PC or mobile?
Perhaps as the market matures, places like Metacritic and game magazines will review and rate indie titles on such systems as this more frequently
Hence Valve's recent announcement of crowdsourcing the Steam game approval process. But as for Metacritic and the "game magazines" that it draws from, how will reliable gaming publications have the time to review even a substantial fraction of indie productions? I can see how a publication swamped with games to review would just rely on the same genetic heuristic that the console makers have been committing for nearly the past three decades.
They'll have the numbers but if it's practically impossible to find the good ones in the pile among the junk
Hence the requirement of a free demo, so that players can download a game and rate it without having to spend anything. It's almost like the old days of cartridge based systems, where one would often rent games to see if they were any good before buying them.
It's possible to connect a laptop to a television. But statistically nobody does this outside the geek demographic of sites like Slashdot. The advantages of Ouya are that 1. it's promoted by its manufacturer as designed for connection to a TV and 2. it includes a controller at no additional charge.
but why exactly is it needed?
Why not?
They're not begging. They're selling it.
Pledge $99 or more:
GET AN OUYA: console and controller. Guarantee we will have one available for you, before it gets to stores. Plus the rewards above. We're figuring out how many we can make! (We have to ask you to add $20 for shipping outside the U.S.) Please add $30 if you want a second controller.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
How about a constructive film instead? Go out and find experts in various fields and put together a proposed solution to something. Energy, education, something, anything. Instead you're making yet more ideological porn.
http://xkcd.com/484/
Frankly I have more fun playing a NDS game on an emulator than playing a PC game, and it was much easier to set them up too!
They should have released some of the Gameboy classics as re-figured as one-off emu+plus game combo .exe or something.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
It took months after the Other OS incident, but that itself was years after the November 2006 launch of the console.
http://liliputing.com/2012/07/mini-x-tv-box-runs-android-linux-for-under-100.html
Considering they are already making devices like this in china, I have little doubt a device like this can be made and manufactured in less than a year.
It will be interesting to see the clones that will follow this project and who's feathers will be ruffled.
I wonder if apple will claim they stole a patient from them and bar its entry into the US?
Can games made for OUYA be distributed outside the OUYA store for users to play on non-rooted consoles, or is it more like iOS and XBox Live Arcade which -- unmodified, out of the box -- will only run games that are sold through the platform's official store? According to the FAQ on their Kickstarter page, it looks like it's going to be the latter:
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
It's sad that in America if your goal is anything other than getting fabulously weatlhy, your motives are instantly questioned and you're labelled a scammer.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
What better way to engage in a circle jerk of intellectual masturbation? Those egos aren't going to stroke themselves.
Whilst it's openness may not be perfect it would love this approach to get a foot in the door of the otherwise draconian console market. Realistically for this project to get anywhere near what people are hoping, it will be it needs to be a Dreamcast level success. To match the Dreamcast this Kickstarter would really need 300,000 backers (it is just reaching 30,000 so who knows).
Hope they never make it resurrect dead beloved ones and change it back to Ouija.
[ducks]
a) this way they get even more money to invest. Look at the trend-analyzis at kicktraq.com. Currently the trend goes towards 40.000.000 USD! If they have a 20.000.000 USD angel investor, that gives them a LOT of cash!
b) Every thought about the fact, that they do not beg for money, but sell actual hardware devices? Right at this moment, they already sold 55.777 consoles! And it's the third day of their funding.
I found this cool site with more information about the OUYA @ www.my-ouya.net. It's the only site i found since there is no official website yet. It has a ton of users and a lot of good information about developers and games.