Ouya CEO Talks Console's Tough First Year, and Ambitious "Ouya Everywhere" Plan

Nerval's Lobster writes "As founder and CEO of the Ouya (pronounced "OOO-yah") game company, Julie Uhrman's mission has been to lure gamers back to their living room televisions. Touch-screen gaming on a smartphone or tablet is nice, she suggests, but a big screen, coupled with the precision of a controller with buttons and analog sticks, offers the best platform for immersive, emotionally engaging experiences. Soon enough, though, you shouldn't need an Ouya console to play Ouya games. Later this week, Uhrman plans to announce 'Ouya Everywhere,' an initiative to bring Ouya games to television sets that aren't connected to Ouya hardware. As a company, Ouya remains vague about just how Ouya Everywhere will work; but in an interview with Slashdot, Uhrman provided a rough idea of what to expect: 'It could be another set-top [box],' she said. 'It could be the TV itself. There's a number of different ways that games can be played on the television, and we're actively exploring all of them.' To be clear, Ouya isn't getting out of the hardware business. The company has promised relatively frequent hardware refreshes, and already upgraded the original Ouya's controller to address early complaints. The next version of the Ouya hardware 'at a minimum will have a higher performing chipset,' she said. 'We have done a lot of work on our controller and we feel like there is even more work to do. Those are the two big things we're focused on.' But while her company builds hardware, Uhrman insists that Ouya is 'really a software company. The largest team inside Ouya is software engineers.' (Ouya has 49 employees, 19 of them engineers.) Ouya arrived with great fanfare in 2012, after a $950,000 Kickstarter campaign met its goal in just eight hours. The fundraiser ended up raising $8.6 million, and Kickstarter backers received their consoles in March 2013."

Comments

Ouya just isn't compelling

[AtariDatacenter]

I was an original backer for the Ouya. The interface is a bit awkward, but worse, the software titles just aren't compelling. There doesn't seem to be a great reason to make an exclusive Ouya game, and anything you can find there you can get on your phone or another platform. Playing smartphone games on your TV just doesn't deliver any kind of wow factor. :(

Re:Ouya just isn't compelling

[hattig]

The devices run Android, and thus gain from being able to play Android games.

Ouya has its own app store where games that are optimised for the Ouya are sold. By optimised, I mean more than just targeting the hardware, but also how it is used - controller on a TV, rather than touch-screen device.

As you can imagine, this can be quite hit and miss. Additionally, the Ouya hardware fell behind the market fairly quickly because of its use of a Tegra 3 which is actually quite poor in terms of graphical power. A Tegra 4 iteration should do a lot to fix this, although a Tegra K1 would be most optimal.

If Apple cared about this market, they would stick an A7 in the next Apple TV and thrash the Ouya senseless with superior hardware, and their app store and developer mindshare (everyone would optimise their iOS games for the Apple TV fairly rapidly).

Re:Ouya just isn't compelling

[kamapuaa]

You have a six digit UID on Slashdot, and you've never heard of Ouya?

Do you at least know what Raspberry Pi or Bitcoins are?

Re:Ouya just isn't compelling

[aardvarkjoe]

Additionally, the Ouya hardware fell behind the market fairly quickly because of its use of a Tegra 3 which is actually quite poor in terms of graphical power. A Tegra 4 iteration should do a lot to fix this, although a Tegra K1 would be most optimal.

I've really never bought this argument. The Ouya hardware compares quite favorably with xbox/ps2 generation of consoles, but there aren't many (if any) Ouya games that come close to the quality of games on those consoles. The problem is a lack of developers targetting Ouya, not a lack of capability of the hardware itself.

I'm very pleased with my Ouya -- it's easily been worth the cost -- but it's definitely got its weak points.