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Ouya Android Game Console Launches, Quickly Sells Out
Ouya, the Android-based game console that arose out of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, officially launched today. The $99 device quickly sold out at a number of retailers, including Amazon and GameStop. "According to Ouya, the console currently has more than 170 downloadable games, as well as a built-in software development kit that enables people to create and test titles right from the hardware." Many reviews of the console suggest the controllers are not very good, and there are reports that the Wi-Fi connectivity can be flaky. There's also a lot of commentary about Ouya that clearly came from unrealistic expectations of what a $99 device can provide. Most of the backers from the Kickstarter campaign have received their consoles, but some are still waiting as Ouya tries to sort out shipping problems with DHL.
Why get this when you can soon get Xbox One? An honest question.
Are these actual games or just shortcuts to websites (like the ones that fill the Chrome App Store)?
The information "sold out" means nothing unless we know how many they released.
Sorry, but you really didn't know much about hardware if it wasn't clear from the start that this thing would not be to play crysis on, but rather be a glorified smartphone console.
Thats not to say it can't have a good number of fun games, but people were expecting COD and the like to be playable on this and thats just stupid.
Their campaign on kickstarter was also pretty deceiving in my opinion and I don't really respect the makers of the ouya for what they did there.
Are people so trained on sub-par, cheap Asian electronics that there's an expectation of suckage on a device that "only" costs $99 ? Is $99 the new throwaway price, where you use something, expect it to fail, then go buy another one? It's the Walmart generation I guess.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
is that Sascha Segan is a douche who can't comprehend the difference between a device at $100 and others at $500-$700.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
People would be complaining about the shape, and the fact that it doesn't use Phillips screws.
I'm a sad panda. I backed them last year (August) as part of their original Kickstarter project. I live in Canada and still have yet to receive my OUYA. Its still in China.
The fact that the stores have sold out is just more salt in the wound. I'm not the only early backer to have his console be delayed. They were promised in March and no one got them at that point. Its now basically July. From what I've heard the console is not powerful (same CPU as my HTC One X) but the $100 price tag is hard to match. If it plays Netflix + Plex Client I'll be happy. If not this thing will be a waste of money.
that hasn't recevied their ouya yet :(
Early backer from day 1. Was hoping to get mine BEFORE retail to develop on. Guess I should have got the dev edition at $699?! Hrm. /me fustrated
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I got my Ouya a few weeks ago. I feel sorry for the people that were part of the Kickstarter but haven't gotten theirs. I had a tracking number for weeks but the US Post office delivered it before the tracking number ever was recognized. DHL from Hong Kong is not exactly a good shipping partner. They took the cheap route on shipping and it looks like it really hurt them. Doing order fulfillment from HK was a mistake. They should have bulk shipped them to the US and shipped them out from here.
As for it's value as a game console. It's kind of disappointing. I've yet to actually pay money for any games, since not one of the demo versions were interesting enough. While the Tegra 3 is a decent chip, somehow they have managed to make it have about the same power as an old SNES. Oddly enough Final Fantasy 3 is one of the few name brand titles. A best seller on the SNES.
As as platform for Android development (one of the reasons I got it) it is fairly disappointing. Their "every game has a demo" model pretty much means anyone developing for it is giving them free content. It' is rare that a game will convince me with a great demo. More often than not a demo just gives me enough to know it is not worth buying.
It also has strange issues with it's sleep mode/power on (I almost always have to walk up and press the button on the top). The gamepad feels awful. The box itself is not exactly easy to place in the living room.
It does seems like a good addition to my collection of failed consoles though, joining my Atari Jaguar and 3DO (among others).
Why get this when you can soon get Xbox One? An honest question.
Why get an Xbox One when you can soon get a PS4? An rhetorical question.
While I haven't yet used a controller that has a touchpad on it, I have used touchpads on numerous computing devices over the decades. They suck. While I'm sure it seems like a great alternative to having an actual touchscreen on the controller, it's not. You have analog sticks on the controller, if you need to control a mouse, then use a stick.
It's almost as bad as the idea of using your phone or tablet with playing games on your PC or console. Here you are, with your hands full either mouse/keyboard or gamepad, and then you need to drop that to use the smartphone or tablet to do stuff (inventory, whatever)? Really?
Sometimes I don't think real gamers are the one designing these products. I guess that is too much to hope for?
Be seeing you...
It will get sued for patent infringement.
don't put down money for things that don't exist, where you don't know whether or not they'll suck.
Clearly, he means children. The cruel man.
Kickstarter is just a method to pre-sell items that traditional funding methods didn't find worthy.
Okay, I get it; he jumped on the negativity. You know, bad news sells.
a lot of the stuff that comes into our office is crap.
Such as his writing.
Perhaps Ouya is having its learning curve right now, but it doesn't mean you need to contribute money to its educational process.
Again, I reference the topic of children. Clearly, his children are born geniuses and know-it-alls; just judge by his remarks, you'll see.
You take all the risk, they get all the rewards. That's the worst investment plan in history.
I hope no lady is trying to give this man a family.
Let other people be the suckers, and reap the rewards later.
Great plan. I'll do the same with his articles from now on.
how is the Xbox One Kinect any worse than any smartphone, tablet, or laptop that has a webcam and/or a mic that people take around with them everywhere, even to bedrooms and bathrooms?
When you take a phone or tablet into the bathroom, do you have the cameras pointing at your face/floor - or ceiling / groin?
Also, do you turn on your camera while in the bathroom? What tablet or smartphone BY DESIGN always is listening through the mic and monitoring the camera?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lots of articles have been posted about XBMC on Ouya, but most of them have to do with early adopter Kickstarter backers sideloading XBMC onto the device, with promises that performance will be better when the real version ships. So, it's launch day. How's the XBMC? Does it stream Blu-Ray ISOs well? I think I speak for many people when I say this is the only reason we are interested in Ouya.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
The Apple TV doesn't come with a controller and play games.
Yet.
Is it really so hard to note that iOS7 includes an API for game controllers and divine the medium term future?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is pretty much the exact opposite of what Polygon is saying?
I'll probably pick one up when Amazon has them back in stock. I like the idea of an underpowered console, as weird as that sounds.
/RANT
RANT
Modern mainstream games (360 and PS3 I'm specifically referring to) just suck. Endless rehashes with overblown budgets, 10 million polys per frame that look pretty great, but the games themselves pretty much just bore me to tears. 0 substance. Not to even mention the $60 price-tag for these overrated, over-hyped, disappointing excuses for a game. I'm not even using my 360 or PS3 these days, they just sit there. I'm no longer willing to give MS, Sony or the big publishers one more cent, or even a minute of my time. They just disgust me. AAA to me means "stay far away", it's rehashed vanilla crap for the masses. Actually, modern mainstream games remind me of Hollywood (that's not a compliment, BTW).
Anyways, I like the idea of a console released by a small company that anyone can write games for, and I plan on supporting them with a purchase. I think it's a huge plus that there's no Call of Boredom or Gears of Boredom type games on this platform.
Wait a few days until actual retail buyers get the units in their hands. Right now on Amazon for example, the majority of the reviewers are kickstarter people, and half of those are whiners who are surprised they didn't get the thing delivered on a silver platter w/a complementary BJ. The sense of entitlement that some of these kickstarters display is pretty sickening. It got to the point reading the Amazon reviews where, when I saw the word "kickstarter", I immediately skipped to the next review.
If I've learned one thing, that is the fact that you don't buy rev. 1 of *any* tech related product. I've got better things to do w/my time than pay to alpha test hardware/firmware/software.
Congrats on the release OUYA! I wish you the best of luck.
Are these actual games or just shortcuts to websites
Ouya applications are Android applications. The biggest difference between an application for an Ouya console and one for a Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 tablet is that phone and tablet applications expect a multitouch screen, while Ouya applications expect a controller with a physical joystick and buttons. A touch screen is better for point-and-click games, while the Ouya controller is better for platformers and the like.
(like the ones that fill the Chrome App Store)?
The Chrome App Store is full of "shortcuts to websites" because Google decided to use the HTML DOM as the primary user-mode API of Chrome OS. I imagine that Ouya went with AOSP instead because WebGL isn't quite as mature as the version of OpenGL ES in Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).
people were expecting COD and the like to be playable on this and thats just stupid.
The first game in the Call of Duty series, released in 2003, was based on a heavily modified Quake III: Team Arena engine. That'd certainly run on a Tegra 3 if Activision cared to port it.
Why the hell would you want to keep one for 10 years?
Because it works and suits my purposes. Why else?
Because it will stop suiting your purposes, for one. Microsoft has announced that there are only ten more Patch Tuesdays left for Windows XP: July 2013 through April 2014, after which Microsoft will end support for the operating system. This means that a PC that still runs Windows XP will no longer suit the purpose as an Internet client after mid-April 2014 when the black hats begin to release their forever-day XP exploits to the throngs of script kiddies.
I am a kickstarter backer, last I heard was "thank you for the money, here is a receipt number", I received no other communication let alone the infamous tracking number. My experience directly contradicts Operations Chief Ken Stephens public statement that "All of these units HAVE left Hong Kong, and you have received your tracking email." I suspect I am not the only one.
Is it really so hard to note that iOS7 includes an API for game controllers and divine the medium term future?
Yes. No iPhone older than the 4S and no iPod touch older than fifth generation will get iOS 7. So if your iPod touch is more than one year old, you'll have to replace it before using a game controller.
There are several problems with using an iPhone as a game controller. For one thing, it's a lot more expensive than a wired or wireless gamepad. It costs hundreds of dollars a year to own an iPhone. Not only do you have to pay for cellular service, but you also have to replace the device when Apple stops supporting it with iOS updates. The iPhone 4 and iPod touch (fourth generation) won't be getting iOS 7, meaning any iPhone older than two years and any iPod touch older than one year won't get any application that relies on iOS 7.
In addition, an iPhone's screen is completely flat. This means that while the player is looking at the action in the middle of the screen or on the Apple TV, he has no tactile reference point against which to position the thumbs over the on-screen jump and fire buttons. Some genres, such as platformers and fighting games, really need physical buttons. Apple is working on a controller API for iOS 7, but again, devices too old to get iOS 7 are too old to be used as a controller.
No iPhone older than the 4S
iPhone *4* (I'm running it on one right now!!). Can't you Apple Haters learn to read a spec sheet right just once?
So if your iPod touch is more than one year old
Then it may still work because the 5th gen iPod touch launched on October 11th, 2011.
Do you know what year it is now?
Then again, why the hell are you bringing the Touch into this when we are talking about Apple TV?
A newer AppleTV that supports games is not out yet but neither is the XBox one, so the point of ages of devices that support iOS7 is utterly irrelevant to my point or anything else. It's just your Apple Hater Tourette's forcing you to post anything you find slightly negative about Apple even if irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have to ask the questions, how many of these were bought out by "experts" or publications that wanted to review the console? How many were actually bought by pure gamers? Usually they give reviewers the equipment to try out, however because it was crowd funded how many of those donations came from gamers rather then people that just wanted to see a linux based game console.
I would have thought the system would have been tested extensively before releasing it to the public and or it is just haters wanting to bad mouth a Linux based system.
Smart people looking for fun, novel experiences already have computers.
But are these PCs in the living rooms of smart people? Sources say no. So what do smart people looking for fun, novel experiences to share with house guests have? Until Ouya, "fun, novel experiences" and multiplayer with multiple gamepads and one big monitor were almost mutually exclusive because there aren't enough deployed home theater PCs to make the home theater PC attractive as a target platform.
They're free to play, which is mostly popular on iOS and Android as the [pay to win] type
Pay-to-win may have become popular on certain mobile phone platforms due to early unavailability of priced applications in Android Market in some countries. But what evidence do you have that developers of Ouya games are flocking to the pay-to-win model rather than the "demo" model under which Id Software distributed the first Doom? Say a game offered the first episode without charge and then unlocked everything for a $10 payment. Would you find that acceptable?
Why get an Xbox One when you can soon get a PS4?
Say halo to exclusive games. Unlike Sony, Microsoft requires all games sold in its console's app store to be approved by a disc game publisher. I'm under the impression that some publishers don't want their products to be on the same console as indie games, and these publishers are more likely to make their games exclusive to Xbox One so that they don't have to compete with reasonably priced indie titles.
1) Can accept bluetooth gamepads, and possible USB based ones too.
This helps only if the game is 1. ported to Android and 2. designed to use the gamepad API. I imagine that prior to Ouya, a lot of developers didn't plan to spend time and money porting their games to Android or adding support for gamepads to an existing Android game because they were under the impression that not enough Android gamers had a gamepad. How many Bluetooth gamepads for Android have been sold?
The play store filters according to your build.prop file. Changing it on a rooted system is trivial.
Even if you can search for controller-friendly games on a rooted Android device, the advantage of Ouya is that you don't have to reformat and root your device just to do so.
It was enough to get Sony to loosen up its developer qualifications and embrace smaller developers on the Vita and PS4.
Proof please.
I can't prove that Ouya was directly responsible for Sony making this policy change, but Sony has become considerably more open to indie developers than Microsoft. Compare PS4 to Xbox One.
A newer AppleTV that supports games is not out yet but neither is the XBox one
Of the two, which has the earlier release date? Which has a release date at all?
Tried sideloading the latest version on Saturday night, and it crashed whenever I tried to add a network share.. :-(
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The Ouya's ability to act as a networked media player (including from SMB shares) is one of the main reason I backed the project. I was in the market for a "WDTV" like device and figured that the added openness and game-friendliness were great bonuses for the price!
When my Ouya arrived a few weeks back, I loaded and installed XBMC using the AOSP Browser that is installed under the "make" tab. It is very important to note that the mainstream XBMC package, even the XBMC for Android and/or ARM etc.. did not support hardware acceleration on the Ouya. There was a very specific Nightly version compiled to be compatible with the Ouya's hardware - at the time, it was " xbmc-20130604-249ada1-Gotham_alpha4SF-armeabi-v7a.apk ". There is likely a newer one now. I encourage you to check the XBMC forums and find the Ouya threads, and also head over to XDA Developers who have Ouya boards that are involved in more advanced hacking around the Ouya in general - there are instructions there for how to get the Play store working, and lots of others etc..
Once installed, XBMC is easily activated from the Ouya's "Make" screen (where all Sideloaded items go at the moment) and works very well. It plays 1080p mkv content w/ subtitles perfectly, thus far, from Samba shares hosted on the local network. There may be a few issues with very particular setups (ie I hear DTS passthrough isn't active yet), but on average it seems to work well. There were a few recoverable crashes here and there, but nothing I wouldn't expect on any alpha build - its very workable. I am to understand it will only grow to be a better experience. I expect in the future as it matures for the Ouya, well vetted builds will be included in the Ouya Store to make installing XBMC more accessible to Joe User.
Serious question
Not!
You've posted the same apologist bullshit for every shitty Microsoft product discussed here. How about you piss off and leave the dicussion to people who actually want to talk about the Ouya?
So far, for me, it's pretty good but crashes when playing some things which I can actually play in XBMC on my 2011 SEMC Xperia Play... On the other hand, when it's not crashing it's a hell of a lot nicer to use than XBMC on RasPi because it's far more responsive.
My biggest problem with the unit so far is that the scaler is underutilized. If your display does not handle one of the two "native" (weasel words for hand-picked, since only one of them is a standard native resolution) resolutions then you wind up with 1080p scaled to VGA. This is unacceptable. If I can't find someone to trade me a TV for some monitors, I'm going to have to take it back. The GPU has a scaler in it, I don't know what the hell they're thinking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I got my Ouya some weeks ago and while I'm not overwhelmed I am not really disappointed either (at least not from the hardware). The console is IMHO as fast as one can be expcected (at launch time with little source code optimization around) and the controller feels ok. What really bothers me is that the OS/launcher isn't ready at all. The main UI works but still needs some polishing (but has seen improvements during the weeks before the launch) and plain Android is shining through at some points (eg notiffications and system settings). They also failed to ship XMBC (that was a promise) and the shipped browser isn't great and is well hidden in the UI. BTW, the touchpach on the controller is a great thing when it comes to browsing, perhaps some strategy games can make use of it as well.
As for the games: a bunch of ported Android games, a couple of amateur works, some really horrible ones ("God of Blades") and a few that seem to be only proof of concepts (eg "The Amazing Frog?"). The free part of the game is rarely convincing to pay for the rest of it.
It was fun to be a backer, my losses (if any - time will tell) are small, but I definitely don't recommend to buy the Ouya right now.
I know the Ouya doesn't come with Google Play Store by default.
Genuine question: can you get it by rooting?
I'm on the lookout for a cheap device that'll let me watch Google Play Movies on a TV, without tying up a PC or my phone. An mk808/similar might be it. An Ouya might be it too.
The $99 price is excellent, but my OUYA was DOA and I've been dealing with their customer support which has certainly eaten up more time than the $99 sticker price was worth to me. I wish I could tell you how awesome it is. Instead I'm dealing with cheeky emails from their CSR. I tried to explain to them that this cheeky language is not appropriate for a support channel since they're likely dealing with irritated customers.
From everything I read about the Ouya.
It has poor quality construction, gamepad fall apart in your hands (well, just the magnetically attached battery cover falls of, but its annoying none the less). Console DOA or dies after a mandatory update.
The menu-interface is slow and reboots frequently.
The games are not great, selection isn't great.
Requires you to have to provide credit card just to use it.
Bottom line is, you got what you paid for.
And the company's official strategy is to replace it quickly with another version you will have to buy again for $99 that may or may not fix the original Ouya issues.
If you think this is a competitor to Xbox One, PS4 or even the Wii U, you are just out of touch with reality.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I have an OUYA, the "Kickstarter" edition. Got it about 2 & 1/2 weeks ago now I like it. The kids really like it. It does pretty much exactly what I wanted it to do. I have 0 problems with the wifi & the only issue I have with the controllers is that the touchpad needs work. Wired Xbox 360 controllers work well. I haven't tried pairing the Wii controllers yet, but I should be able to. I've bought two games (BombSquad & Ice Rage) cause the kids loved the demos. Stalagflight is simple but fun. Canabalt has laggy input which makes it difficult to time jumps. XBMC works well even in beta, but you may want to hook a keyboard up for the initial setup. Most of the emulators are well done but I wish they had more output filters.
I've tried side loading basically all of the Humble Bundle Android games. If they are made to work with a controller, they work well. The rest of them, not so much. Aquaria is as just as responsive as any PS2 title, so I'm thinking a lot of the current controller issues are with the games themselves & not the hardware. F-Droid has a quite a bit of GPL software & games that will run on the OUYA. Frozen Bubble works great.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Sad, pathetic, and most of all, lonely.
Are you talking about FOSS fanboys or COD fanboys?
How much of that Kickstarter money went to Ouya Park at E3? That can't have been cheap. It might not have been necessary. I understand the need for sales and marketing expenditures, and the need to distinguish yourself from the multitude of "indies," but half a city block with music and activities? Gotta be big bucks.
Full disclosure: I didn't go to Ouya Park when I was at E3 (pesky day job), but my first instinct is always to throw money at development rather than marketing. Maybe that's a bad thing.
the 5th gen iPod touch launched on October 11th, 2011
Then why is Wikipedia off by a year? Perhaps the TechRadar article that you cite is confusing the fourth generation hardware with iOS 5 preloaded, which did ship in October 2011, with fifth generation hardware, which appears to have shipped in October 2012.
Or was never in stock? Ask many OUYA backers on Kickstarter, with the 'promise' that it would be delivered before it went retail... :(
I was sarcasm-ing. I guess people need tags to recognize such things here.
For future reference: There are two reasons you might need tags. One is the correlation of proficiency in computer science and information technology with Asperger syndrome. This means Slashdot users are more likely to be Aspies like myself (diagnosed in ninth grade) than the general population. Another is that we have enough actual iOS fanboys here that any attempt to sort sarcasm from sincerity runs smack into Poe's law.
the iPhone is [...] a controller that plays games -- i.e., a controller for the Apple TV (which it is) that can ALSO play games (which it can).
It's a controller that can't play certain kinds of games very well, at least without an additional controller.