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Ouya Android Console Blows Past Kickstarter Goal

Posted by Unknown on from the smells-like-2001 dept.

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?

11 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Holy funding, splatman! by raydobbs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Holy funding, splatman! by MrSome · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed 100%.

      At $99 it's cheaper than... well, any gaming platform, right? (Android Phone, iPhone, Nintendo DS, Wii, PS3, Xbox360)

      So if it can offer the same type of entertainment options... (Netflix, HBOGo... etc), why not give it a try?

      All they need is some developers who know to focus on the FUN factor of games. I'm tired of the industry rating games on graphics and realism. I want games that are fun, with a high replayability factor. I have enough realism from 8-5. I don't need to see individual hairs on the back of my character's neck stand up when he gets shot in the face.

    2. Re:Holy funding, splatman! by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because graphics cost a lot of money, and effort there would be better off on gameplay or the next title. or on a cheaper game-I'd rather have it coat half as much and have snes era graphics.

      Add for realism- for some games, it's good. For most, out actively detracts from fun gameplay. Concentrate on it only if it's a key concept, otherwise ignore it

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    3. Re:Holy funding, splatman! by DemonGenius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Add for realism- for some games, it's good. For most, out actively detracts from fun gameplay. Concentrate on it only if it's a key concept, otherwise ignore it

      As a long time gamer I wholeheartedly agree. While we've seen an increase in graphics quality over time, we've seen very little movement in terms of innovative gameplay/controls/storylines/etc. Lately, it's only the indie games that I've seen that have implemented really original ideas. I love the idea of a console like this coming to market, it will give the big guys a run for their money.

    4. Re:Holy funding, splatman! by raydobbs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with your argument is that the Wii is actually a pretty good console - it's just saddled with crappy games because that's all that makes it past Nintendo's vetting process. Cheap and sleezy ports and titles that are just 'phoned in' make up a large bulk of the console's 'shovelware'. If Nintendo didn't require you to be an A tier developer with blockbuster games already in your stable - then they'd have some room for innovative products on the platform. As it is - they have geared their developer's licensing to poach developers from other consoles.

      Given the Android platform, this could really open the world of console game development to the independents - those who could never convince Nintendo or Sony to even sell them a development kit - or pay for Microsoft XBOX's QA for deployment on XBOX Live. I've seen some really impressive indie games out there - and this could be their shot at getting in on a console that hasn't already 'cherry-picked' their developer base.

      Of course, there is also a lot of $hit indie games as well - but that's kind of to be expected with no vetting process of any kind. Perhaps as the market matures, places like Metacritic and game magazines will review and rate indie titles on such systems as this more frequently - and it will not be such a crap-shoot.

    5. Re:Holy funding, splatman! by Mike+Buddha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because we'd like to be able to play the games without waiting 10 years for the development to finish. If there are engineering trade-offs to be made in game dev, please opt for "fun" over "realistic", Devs.

      --
      by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
  2. Cool tech... but... by mystikkman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >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?

  3. Suckers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    $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...

  4. A Kickstarter Console for Kickstarter Games! by na1led · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  5. Scam-like points of note by oGMo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At a glance it seems legit, but on rereading, I had to wonder this myself:

    • Promise of "killer" opening price-point of $99.
    • Promise of "every game free-to-play".
    • Use of Android and other buzzwords.
    • Multitude of unrelated screenshots of unrelated, unsupported, non-Android games.
    • Promise of "easy rooting" (why would you need to root something if root was manufacturer-supported?)
    • Lots of pseudo-appeal to the "non-mainstream".
    • Release in 10 months with <$1mil budget.
    • >10,000+ consoles already promised at or below price-point.

    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

  6. Re:summed up in the summary by paxprobellum · · Score: 5, Funny

    On the other hand, replying to the reply of the first poster is super cool.