Slashdot Mirror
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.
>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 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
$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...
There's two flip-out reactions about this console 1) It's a Kickstarter scam to steal money and always be vaporware or 2) 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 and AAA developers won't make any games for it.
Gamers are notorious armchair analysts who usually have no idea what they're talking about. (See: Xbox360 vs PS3 hardware power arguments when they were launched) Gamers should be cautious, mostly due to Kickstarter's sketchyness, but I don't see why this Kickstarter is any more suspect than other Kickstarters.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
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?
I posted as AC by mistake... but yes I am an independent game developer (not hard to find these days with mobile devices).
And I am not trolling or stupid... I just need to Google my games to know they are available for free and being copied. I have data from my transactions and number of what countries buy or download my games. I can tell that although Americans buy a lot but this is not true for other countries. For instance, one of my games has sold almost less copies than there are download sites with cracked versions of it. The fact some people don't do it don't mean it won't be the main attractive for most people (specially outside us)
So what?
I mean that seriously, you are not losing money, it is no different than if someone did not buy the game. I know that sounds harsh, but the reality is every minute you spend worrying about people like that is one less you can spend getting actual customers. To an indie dev, I would suggest making a version to post on such websites. Change some models/sprites/backgrounds to pirates or zombies or something, and leave out the ending. This way it will at least be harder for people to find the pirated full version and you will get free advertising.
Spend more time making it worth me buying and less time worrying about what broke folks do. Some people will never give you their money, don't worry about what you can't change. Worry about getting those of us who might give you money to actually do so.
Please also tell me what game it is so I can go check it out.
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
On the other hand, replying to the reply of the first poster is super cool.
What about replying to the reply of the ... aww, nuts, skip it.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo