Razer Acquires Ouya's Storefront and Technical Team

An anonymous reader writes: The Ouya Android-based gaming console was one of Kickstarter's biggest successes — and one of the biggest letdowns for all the backers. The console never really took off, and the company behind it has limped along over the past couple years. Until today. Razer has now acquired the Ouya technical team, as well as their online storefront — but not the console hardware itself. Razer intends to dump of all these new resources into its Forge TV product, also an Android game console. "Razer went so far as to kick a little sand in the face of the little-console-that-couldn't—by advertising its own Forge microconsole as a 'more advanced' system and telling Ouya owners that they will receive 'a clear path of migration' to buy the company's current $100, AndroidTV-compatible box." The fate of Ouya's hardware is not explicitly mentioned, but the news article suggests it is simply "discontinued."

Comments

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

That cheap piece of crap will feel right at home with the rest of Razer's catalog.

Re:Awesome!

[The-Ixian]

You seem to not like Razor's products and yet you own the rest of their catalog?

I think you need to step out of the closet and admit your Razor product addiction.

Kickstarter forever

[frovingslosh]

So someone got incredibly rich from a Kickstarter campaign and a lot of contributors got screwed. We refuse to learn from that. Lets put that in the past (and mod down anyone who mentions it) and move on to funding the next person who wants to make a lot of money off of us. Maybe we can even finance another Hollywood movie in return for another broken promise.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[ArcadeMan]

That's right! Let's throw away the whole system because of a few corrupted people!

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're not really familiar with the concept of investment risk, eh? If you don't do your own proper research before backing something, then who is to blame again?

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Kickstarter isn't an investment.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn idiots keep treating Kickstarter like a damn shopping mall. It's not an investment, and the backees don't owe the backers squat. These morons can be pissed all they want, it's their own damn fault for treating these projects as something they're absolutely, explicitly *not*.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Fire_Wraith]

Except that it is. People treating it as something else doesn't change the fact that you are not purchasing a finished product. You are making a small-scale investment with the promise of specific rewards once the project completes.

Sometimes that works out. Other times it doesn't, and it behooves anyone who's contributing to a Kickstarter project to do a bit of research about the company or individuals behind it, how feasible their plan is, and overall how risky it is.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[gstoddart]

You are free to piss away your money on any damned thing you want to.

But, in general, I'd say it's a fair observation that Kick Starter mostly serves to fund people who have an idea, and nothing else ... who may or may not reach their goals, and who will probably still go under, leaving all of your stuff in the hands of an entity you wouldn't have started a business relationship with.

From the stories we see, it really has the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme as a bunch of guys play the get-rich-quick game by pretending they have a business plan.

I've never heard of either Razer or Ouya, but the news stories I've seen over the last few years says I'd never pay into a Kick Starter.

Who you give your money to is your damned business.

It's like PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Lumpy]

Sorry, but Kung Fury was worth every single penny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's also better than anything that Hollywood has produced in the past 40 years.

Re: Kickstarter forever

[Anonymous Coward]

It is absolutely not an investment. It's a gift with the hope of getting something out the other end.

It's much more like buying a lottery ticket and nothing like buying a share of stock. If the lottery ticket might eventually pay-off at its own face-value, that is.

People who "buy" things through KickStarter are deluding themselves if they think about it that way.

I donated to a KickStarter project, and IMH it was wildly successful (Planetary Annihilation): they were /way/ over-funded (I think they got ~2.5x their initial "ask") and they delivered a working game that they continue to work on, improve, etc. Had the game never been published, I wouldn't have filed a law suit to recover my "mismanaged" "investment."

But I will say this: it would definitely be irritating if I donated to a project hoping I would get something for it, and then the people who owned the project basically used my money as a seed to sell their company for a huge amount of cash, with no product to boot. It sounds an awful like that is what happened here.

Caveat donator.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[CastrTroy]

I don't actually think I've ever seen a kickstarter that I would qualify as an investment. For me, an investment is something where I give somebody $x and at a future point in time there's a reasonable chance that I could end up with cash or negotiables worth $x+y. Of course, there's always some risk that the investment doesn't work out and I end up with $x-y or even when x=y and you get $0. But there should be a chance of actually increasing your money.

For every kickstarter project I've seen, the buy in amount is very close, if not exactly equal to the retail price of the product. Because of this, you're almost always better off waiting until they actually have the product completed, and then just buying it when you know that it's actually worth the money. I don't think I've ever seen a kickstarter where they give you a significant discount on the retail value of the item. If there was a reasonable chance that you could get the product for half price, for investing in the product in the early stages, then I could see a lot of incentive to pitch in. But there's no way I'm paying full price for an item that doesn't exist yet and that I may never actually get.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[frovingslosh]

So you're not really familiar with the concept of investment risk ...

You're obviously deluded about the concept of investment. Please enlighten us on what the investors who funded Ouya through Kickstarter got when the owner cash out and sold it to Razer.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[mwvdlee]

They delivered the product as promised, they just never gained the market share to go much further.
This is the same risk you take if you buy any new gizmo in a store.
Remember HD-DVD players?
Nobody got screwed here.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[RKThoadan]

Remember: "Man pays $50 and gets what he paid for!" doesn't make for very exciting news. The vast majority of Kickstarters work relatively well, perhaps with some delays, but nothing too serious.

Certain projects categories are a bit more volatile than others. Software and gadgets are among the most risky, which happens to be the categories of primary interest to slashdotters. In comparison, board games are an extremely safe bet. In the vast majority of cases the creator already has a print & play version available. Kickstarting is becoming positively routine in the board games world, and that's despite having one of the most famous kickstarter screw ups (The Doom that Came to Atlantic City).

Re:Kickstarter forever

[ArcadeMan]

In general you only hear about people screwing up and making mistakes, so of course you think the majority of Kickstarter projects are run by thieves and crooks.

I have only participated in one Kickstarter project, but it went really well and I'm extremely pleased with the products that I received.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[minijedimaster]

You are free to piss away your money on any damned thing you want to.

But, in general, I'd say it's a fair observation that Kick Starter mostly serves to fund people who have an idea, and nothing else ... who may or may not reach their goals, and who will probably still go under, leaving all of your stuff in the hands of an entity you wouldn't have started a business relationship with.

From the stories we see, it really has the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme as a bunch of guys play the get-rich-quick game by pretending they have a business plan.

I've never heard of either Razer or Ouya, but the news stories I've seen over the last few years says I'd never pay into a Kick Starter.

Who you give your money to is your damned business.

It's like PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.

Razer has been around for years. Known for making "gaming" peripherals for the PC such as keyboards and mice. They're not running any kickstarter campaign here, they're absorbing some technical talent from a former kickstarter company to do something similar to what that company did. RTFA.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[zlives]

not to mention, Ouya came along the time when both M$ and $ony were going to force always on walled garden camera integration into your living space... and for a lot of people it was a FU to the establishment and mayhave forced some change on the online behavior from the said vendors. It was to establish a third (4th 5th) console option showing there was demand for a less anal intrusive product on the market... if that is Razor or Ouya or steambox or whatever else... the point has been made.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[frovingslosh]

Well it failed, so nothing. Duh.

No, it succeeded very well for the guy who collected all of the money.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[minstrelmike]

first, define "angel" investor.
Now define kickstarter investing.
If you're getting a guaranteed return, it isn't called investing, it is called "buying."
Purchasing a stock certificate in order to hold onto it is called investing. That's different than "playing the market" even tho you buy stocks in companies in both cases.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Fire_Wraith]

Well, with investments that promise cash returns, it's very easy to categorize the return. I can't speak for others, but when I've kickstarted a game or other project, I expect that what I'm getting is going to exceed the value of the money I'm putting in, even if that value is in the form of largely intangible enjoyment. Sometimes I'm wrong about that, and in at least one case spectacularly so (I played the beta for about ten minutes, and concluded that it was utter crap that I had zero further interest in), but that was my poor estimate.

And part of why it works is that there are people who (at least for some projects) who value the proposed project enough that they put forward the money ahead of time. Maybe some of them are foolishly overestimating the value, but that's how it goes sometimes. Sure, you can wait until it's actually produced, but then you're not one of those people who wants it enough to do so - and I certainly wouldn't argue that you should do anything but wait and see, in that case, because there is indeed risk that the project could fail and you'd be out that money with nothing to show for it.

I'd say it's more of an investment than anything, given all that - it's not a donation if you're expecting/hoping for something tangible in return that is at least commensurate in value, with a degree of risk that you might wind up with nothing at all. You're just investing in the possibility of getting a copy of a particular proposed game/console/etc, rather than getting a certain amount of monetary profit back.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[PopeRatzo]

I've never heard of either Razer

Razer is one of the biggest manufacturers of specialty gaming hardware for PCs, including keyboards, controllers, mice, high-performance mousepads, and headsets.

They've been around since 1998 and have around 400 employees. Don't confuse them with a kickstarter campaign.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[CastrTroy]

But the problem I see is that you'll never get more than your initial investment back. With the Ouya kickstarter the buy in was $100 if you wanted them to send you a console if they ever eventually released one. The problem was that when they eventually did end up releasing the console, it was $100 even for those who didn't invest initially. So there is nothing to gain by being an investor. You'd be much better off just putting your money in a bank and then buying the product when it ultimately comes out. Unless the product was something that didn't exist anywhere and provided some new functionality, then it might be worth it just in case your investment is the one that makes it a reality. But with products like Ouya, there's already plenty of other video game systems out there, and had the Ouya never been made you could have just spent your $100 on some other video game system.

Re: Kickstarter forever

[alvinrod]

Just because you're not receiving ownership of the company does not mean it isn't an investment. Whichever dictionary Google uses for results defines the word as follows:

the action or process of investing money for profit or material result.

The Kickstarter backer rewards or eventual product is the material reward in this case.

Also, have you ever heard the phrase "Improving education is investing in the future of our country." or something similar to that effect? Clearly no one is talking about owning some part of future generations or anything along those lines.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Triklyn]

i've kicked into 7-8 kickstarters now, probably nowhere near what many have, but all have been moderately successful.

i've also kicked in with the understanding that it'd be nice if they succeed, but there's no guarantee.

and if people like me don't kick in, this product that i think is neato may never get made.

Timelines have been blown, but all my "purchases" have been good. Even if i used them less than i thought i would, it's no fault of the campaign.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Triklyn]

:) saw that, was thinking of kicking in for a friend at one point.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[unimacs]

Sometimes you get a discount. More often it's just that you'll be one of the first to get your hands on a product. Contributing to a kickstarter campaign is not done for the financial rewards (there are none). It's done to help fund a product that you're interested in, or just to help somebody out. If there is an equivalent product out there, then it doesn't make sense.

At the time Ouya was going to offer something that the major console makers weren't. In the end, they simply didn't execute well enough, fast enough. That is a risk you take when deciding to contribute. You have to remember too that most of these campaigns ask for relatively small contributions. You're not betting your house on the success of these startups.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[drinkypoo]

They delivered the product as promised

Well, no. Not really. They promised an open and hackable platform. But they didn't deliver that. They released a shitty and broken platform. Many units overheat. All original controllers were shit, they had to do a second run. And the "recovery" is shit. It's implemented at the same level as the OS, so if you ruin your OS, your Ouya is really and truly bricked. Nobody has figured out how to get JTAG on it. USB keyboards become controller #1 so nothing works until you unpair them and the keypad (which will have become controller #2) and then re-pair the keypad. Pairing of PS3 controllers was never reliable. Etc etc. Ouya is a turd, they failed miserably, and it's not clear why anyone would bother to pick up the pieces.

Re: Kickstarter forever

[jsh1972]

Except that they DID release a product, to all the kickstarter backers as well as for sale to the general public. That the console didn't see much success in the marketplace has no bearing on the fact that they did deliver.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[tompaulco]

first, define "angel" investor. Now define kickstarter investing. If you're getting a guaranteed return, it isn't called investing, it is called "buying." Purchasing a stock certificate in order to hold onto it is called investing. That's different than "playing the market" even tho you buy stocks in companies in both cases.

If we are going to classify Kickstarter Projects as an investment, then we have to understand this: The maximum possible ROI is 0% (value of product equals what you put in ), and it goes down from there.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[gl4ss]

they didn't get screwed as such.

it was just that for some reason they were hyped up into thinking that an android box from company B would somehow be upermegasupadupacool compared to just any other android box(and usb controller) that's on the market and for some reason they got into thinking they'd get cooler games than on android even though it's the same frigging thing.

thing is, an used 100 bucks laptop would do the role much better. but majority of ouyas backers were people who have used 100 bucks laptop or two laying around anyways. it's baffling though why they got excited for it - a bunch of those are just hipsters "showing it to the man!"(ms/sony) without understanding what they're buying, what it's made from and why it's not sticking it to the man in the slightest.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[geminidomino]

Don't confuse them with a kickstarter campaign

Considering their QA and build quality, it's an easy mistake to make.

The only Razer product I ever bought that didn't shit out on me a week after warranty (max) was up was a mouse pad.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[ottothecow]

There does seem to be a difference though.

Some of the earliest kickstarters I kicked into fell into two buckets.

1) Something like "We want to make a second season of our video series, please kick in, we've got rewards at various tiers." This is great...I'm not really buying anything because the reward values are less than what I am paying. Also, they were generally making followup work or were established people starting a new project...so you knew what was coming.

2) Some craftsman wants to make something cool, but maybe he needs certain parts or materials which have a large order minimum. So he does a kickstarter. If at least 150 people want to buy one, he meets the minimums and starts working. If not, everybody gets their money back (like any unsuccessful kickstarter funding).

I know there is a place for the more ambitious projects. But they tend to get much further away from #2. They are no longer a leatherworker who needs a bulk discount on brass hardware to be profitable or a board game creator who has already completed their game but can't find a printer that is going to do less than 500 printings for a reasonable price. Instead they are people who maybe have a working prototype for some complicated electronic device, but they don't have a finalized design, and they definitely don't have working software to control it...they hope to pay for that with the kickstarter funds (I bought something like this...it eventually got delivered and the physical product is high quality, but the software was borderline unusable so I eventually gave up).

At that point you are asking for venture capital from strangers who have been promised an actual product--you are doing preorders without an obligation to deliver. Make your product sound really cool but set your funding goal low enough, and plenty of people will sign up.

Re:Kickstarter forever

[Triklyn]

my first contribution was to the hexbright.

it kinda fell into bucket 2, and i haven't contributed to a project in a while now. bulk discount definitely there, timeline blown the hell away, but the product was solid, and i mean that literally, i think i could brain someone with that flashlight and it would still work. software was kinda meh, but still a solid product.

Ouya? Razer?

[ArcadeMan]

Screw that, I just got my Raspberry Pi 2 and RetroPie will fill all my needs.

Re:Ouya? Razer?

[OrangeTide]

Tegra 3 in the Ouya is still faster than a Raspberry Pi 2. (RPi2 is faster than a Tegra 2 though)

My hope was they would release an update of Ouya with the Tegra K1. But that never happened. The SHIELD console has a Tegra X1, but the base unit costs twice what Ouya did, so it's a bit hard to justify the purchase. It's certainly more than twice the performance, but is it twice the fun?

Re:Ouya? Razer?

[ArcadeMan]

The Ouya is/was more expensive than the Raspberry Pi 2. You get what you pay for, but with the RPi2 there's a huge community around it.

Ouya was all false promises.

[goruka]

They promised the revolution, a home console for everyone, freedom from the big publishers and for everyone to develop.

When I finally got mine, I turned it on and the first thing it did was ask for my credit card number. Tried to skip it but it was not possible.

I left it collecting dust ever since. So much for revolution and freedom, not going to miss it.

Re:Ouya was all false promises.

[NonUniqueNickname]

Should have bought lottery tickets with that kickstarter money instead. It's no revolution when a single company controls everything, they wanted to be steam for android, that's all. But there's hope yet, a revolution is possible. We all have, in our pockets, an android device more capable than the Ouya. We all plan to upgrade said device regularly. It has internet access. It can project its screen on the TV. All we need is a good cheap bluetooth controller.

Re:Ouya was all false promises.

[radish]

I get that prompting for a CC# at boot is not particularly friendly, but I fail to see how it is even related to being "a home console for everyone, freedom from the big publishers and for everyone to develop". Fact is very few (any?) big publishers put anything on the platform, there were tons of indie games, and you certainly can turn any box into a dev kit. Seems like they fulfilled those promises.

The fact that it was underpowered and the games didn't appeal to me is what made me sell mine (at a profit, somehow!). I don't believe anyone was screwed.

Re:Ouya was all false promises.

[gl4ss]

you can turn any xbox into a dev kit of some level and any windows phone into a dev phone.

provided that you're willing to shell out your credit card number ;D. anyhow, you can develop on windows without giving a credit card number too.

aaaaaaaaanyhow, they originally marketed it as an open kind of box, while actually making it as closed as they could get away with without stomping on licenses of the stuff they used pretty much.

the whole marketing was to more or less market it as an "OPEN" "new kind" of console more akin to let's say a dos pc or whatever, but what the users got was a box that asked for their CC before letting to do _anything_. they got a box that felt more closed and more intrusive than a friggin surface(non pro).

Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[tepples]

They promised [...] freedom [...] for everyone to develop.

When I finally got mine, I turned it on and the first thing it did was ask for my credit card number. Tried to skip it but it was not possible.

If no one is willing to pay for games, then how should everyone keep a roof over their heads while developing games? Or by "freedom" did you mean free as in FSF, with all games having DFSG-free code and assets?

Re:Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think he meant what he said: that when he could not even play one of the included free demos without entering his credit card # he turned it off...permanently. I would do the same thing.

Re:Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[gstoddart]

If you can't use a piece of technology out of the box before you get prompted for a credit card, you pretty much have to assume the rest of the experience will be even worse.

Things which go straight to the "give us your credit card" are generally not to be trusted, and is a sign it's going to be asking for money pretty much constantly.

If you bought a TV, and the first thing it did was prompt for your credit card, would you actually do that?

Re:Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[goruka]

I don't care about how should everyone keep a roof over their heads. That's not what they sold to their customers.
Fact is they promised something to backers and delivered the complete opposite.

Re:Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[Stormy Dragon]

My TV did do that the first time I turned it on, but to be fair that's only because channel 2 is QVC.

Re: Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[tepples]

How can someone demonstrate that he is willing to pay for games without entering his payment credentials?

Re:Keeping a roof over game developers' heads

[tepples]

If you bought a TV, and the first thing it did was prompt for your credit card, would you actually do that?

Perhaps if it was a device specifically intended for use with electronically purchased copies of works of authorship, not a device primarily intended to decode and display HDMI or ATSC signals. A Kindle reader, for example, needs an Amazon account.

My Ouya

[OrangeTide]

I've had my Ouya for a little over 2 years, and it's probably the longest amount of fun I've gotten out of $100 in a long time. Even if it ended today, which it won't, I will still have been happy with my purchase.

Re:My Ouya

[goruka]

Just for $100? so you didn't purchase anything on it?

Re:My Ouya

[supremebob]

Ah, so HE'S the guy who caused Ouya to fail by only playing the game demos without buying anything. You bastard!

Re:My Ouya

[drinkypoo]

You shoulda got a used original Xbox. You can often pick one up for $20, if you can solder you don't need to buy anything to mod most of them, there's a ton of games and a ton of indie software including a crapload of emulators. You could have saved it from the landfill and saved eighty bucks at the same time

Re:My Ouya

[OrangeTide]

I have an Xbox, it died. I still have a lot of games for it, few of them play correctly on the 360.

I have two broken PS2's, I gave up replacing them, they all seem to die if you put a lot of hours on them with RPGs.

Re:My Ouya

[OrangeTide]

Ha, yea. I didn't buy a lot of stuff for it, but I didn't include that in my total. I did confirm that some things do run on non-Ouya hardware, so I've not really wasted my money. I backed up the APKs for the things I paid for in the inevitable time when Ouya is gone.

Re:Eh?

[dottrap]

I disagree about Steam Machines. There are real problems I have that I hope Steam Machines solves. I want a fully powered, gaming PC that just works, but doesn’t lock me down in what I can do with it.

- I want the benefits of mass production commodities and be able to buy a good PC gaming machine off-the-shelf for a lower price.
- I’m tired of spending so much time building my own custom PC and doing OS installations.
- I’m sick of Microsoft charging me many times more than everybody else for a Windows license because I didn’t buy a pre-configured machine from an OEM.
- I’m sick of Windows blue screening and corrupting my EFI boot partitions so my dual boots won’t work.
- I’m sick of Windows nagging me about turning on Secure Boot. I don’t want it.
- I’m sick of big giant PC towers that take up massive space and don’t fit well in home theater cabinets (or anywhere else).
- I’m sick of loud PC fans and the unnecessarily high power consumption and heat
- I want a gaming PC that is fully utilized for games, not loaded down with needless background processes sucking up CPU and RAM
- Hardware driver updates for Windows is such a chore.
- Windows mostly broke DirectX/DirectInput compatibility. I’m so sick of having to get xce360 working and re-configured for every single game I buy now.
- I hate it that Fraps doesn’t work any more with non-fullscreen mode starting in Windows 8
- I don’t want to be pushed to Windows Store

No, he problably isn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have funded 40+ kickstarts. One flaked out and cost me the whole $20, at least 6 had delays greater than 50% of the estimated delivery time. But more than half nailed it and I got what I purchased.

I backed the Ouya, and kept careful track of what they were up to. It was a good idea, it was well executed. It worked... But anyone who guarantees you a successful venture in the gaming console market is a liar. It's an unpredictable space. Just look at the money that Microsoft and Sony have had to dump into it to be stay successful (red-ring-of-death? blue-light-of-death? expensive). Look at the success of the Wii on technically inferior hardware (for the day).

What the Ouya people missed was the difficulty in porting many games designed around finger-swipes to use classic thumb controllers. The conversion rate of hit Android games over to the Ouya platform wasn't nearly what they hoped for.

The dream, a gaming console selling $5 games of "good Android quality" is a good dream. I've no regrets for backing it.

Mod Parent Up

[Kunedog]

Yes, Ouya lied about openness and only revealed the truth in (now deleted) forum posts shortly before launch.

Here's what the Kickstarter page said about openness and hackability:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

Hackers welcome. Have at it: It's easy to root (and rooting won't void your warranty). Everything opens with standard screws. Hardware hackers can create their own peripherals, and connect via USB or Bluetooth. You want our hardware design? Let us know. We might just give it to you. Surprise us!

But close to release, I decided to never buy one after I learned that the company didn't support a genuine end user recovery mode, and witnessed an Ouya employee (Al Sutton) berating and insulting the customers who insisted on one.

His attitude about custom firmware was shocking as well.

From a long-dead ouyaforum.com thread:

I'm keeping a track of how many requests we get relating custom firmware, and from what I'm seeing the user base is not as interested in custom firmware as you might think, which is echoed by this thread (we've shipped 60,000+ units, and less than 10 people have commented in the last month in this thread about getting access to recovery mode).That doesn't mean that we're shooting the idea down, you need to keep in mind that in terms of priorities this is way down the list as you'd expect from any feature where it's being requested by less than one tenth of one percent of the user-base.

After people began calling Al Sutton out over this and citing the Kickstarter page to him, he made things even worse by implying that root access was a priviledge and that Ouya was doing modders a special favor by having it, and that Ouya hadn't promised much of anything (instead attempting to compare the console's openness to that of consoles you can buy at Gamestop).

As for "Open"; Well, a year or so ago the idea of going into a gaming centric store like GameStop or Game, buying a console, taking it home, writing a game on it, and publishing it without spending big money on development kits, licensing, and the like was pretty much non-existant. That's where OUYA is open; It's open to anyone to write games and apps without having to pay dev kit and licensing fees, it's open in that once you have your console you can code for it.
The reason you can still simply get root access is that I've seen people want to tinker beyond what most users would do. OUYA could stick to what was originally put on the Kickstarter page and take away root from non-devkits, but I, for one, would be against that, because I've seen that people do use it constructively and responsibly, and not everyone bricks their device then raises a support ticket to try and get OUYA to fix it.

It really floored me to read this a week before Ouya's launch, given the kickstarter page's promises of hackability.

Anyone with a reflashable phone (or any pretty much any other Android device whatsoever capable of using custom ROMS) knows that a real recovery mode is absolutely essential, in case the OS/kernel gets borked. And a functioning non-OS-dependant recovery mode isn't just important for hackers. It could also be the difference between a faulty official update merely inconveniencing you, or outright bricking your console. Ouya's supposed "recovery mode" relies on an already-bootable OS, so it's useless.

Even worse was the principle of the thing, and the evil behaviour of promising a feature from the beginning, then trying to handwave it away at crunchtime and citing a vague low demand (which wouldn't matter even if true). It reeks of Elite:Dangerous, which announced that they disabled the offline mode right before release.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[drinkypoo]

Let us not forget that it was supposed to have fully working XBMC at release time (if not included, then downloadable) which still hadn't materialized over a month later. Did that ever really happen? Before I took my Ouya back to Gamestop, I tried numerous nightlies and none of them were ever anywhere close to stable, nor did any of them really work properly anyway.

Ouya really set Android gaming back substantially with their incompetence. It's good to see that some other manufacturers are now bringing devices to market, even if the most reputable are Mad Catz and Razer — both known for making cheap knockoff trash.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[BasilBrush]

Ha ha. I remember you arguing how Android was going to the platform for games because of Ouya.

So it really was a shit as I sad it would be.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[drinkypoo]

Ha ha. I remember you arguing how Android was going to the platform for games because of Ouya.

Well, I do think I left in some weasel words about how they could screw it up, and how it might be some successor which would dominate on the same basis. But yeah, I bet on Ouya, and I was wrong. It does happen.

So it really was a shit as I sad it would be.

Yep.

Ouya developers

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet nobody covers the story of contracted developers that were promised thousands of dollars to develop free games for Ouya and with this buyout Ouya just cancelled the contracts, leaving any loans they took out to develop their games unpaid. http://puu.sh/jfvRQ/605c4e5a90.png