
The reality of the Ouya console doesn’t match the hype - reidmain
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality-of-the-ouya-console-doesnt-match-the-hype-why-you-should-be-ske
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drone
I find Ouya a lot less questionable as a Kickstarter project than PA using it
as a fundraising platform for operating expenses, which no other company could
get away with as far as I can tell.

~~~
aeurielesn
I couldn't have put this better into words than you. I think they are
convinced they deserve equal treatment to Wikipedia, since they are planning
to do this on a yearly basis. Disappointing.

~~~
drone
I really don't understand why they chose kickstarter, when they could've just
put up a paypal donate option. Well, except perhaps that anything remotely
cool on kickstarter gets written up everywhere.

I'd like to add one more thing as well, but don't want to go back and edit: I
find that Ouya, by having a -functional- hardware prototype that serves most
of the core features it will promise as a piece of hardware, is already well
advanced beyond the state of most kickstarter projects. The most frustrating
thing for me about kickstarter is how many projects are -conceptual- at the
kickstarter phase.

I refuse to give someone money because they're unwilling to take the risk to
build the first version of something with their own sweat, blood, and tears
before begging for cash. Why should I pay you just because you have an idea?
Show me that you can fully implement it. Better yet, show me that you're done
and you just need to raise the cash to make it happen. There seems to be
something in the start-up world these days that just having the idea and the
merest inkling of how to achieve it should be all that it takes to get people
to throw money at you.

~~~
nitrogen
If you build it first, there is a risk that Kickstarter will reject your
application as seeking funding for business operations, rather than funding
for a specific project.

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pbreit
This article is completely stupid. The whole point of Kickstarter is to sell a
dream. 9 months (not 8) is plenty of time to get the pieces in place. And you
know what? It'll probably slip a few months. Big deal. The entire article is
chock full of FUD. Why not give the company a few weeks or months to make some
visible progress before trying to squash the enthusiasm. Donators are only in
for $99 so it's not like anyone's going bankrupt over it.

~~~
geon
You are glossing over the main point of the article; they don't have any
games.

A gaming platform is only as good as its games.

~~~
towndrunk
The iPhone didn't have any games either until the actual iPhone SDK was
released, which was much later then the iPhone itself was released.

~~~
cube13
The difference is that the iPhone is a phone, not a gaming platform.

~~~
Kronopath
Exactly. People who buy the iPhone do _not_ do so primarily for games. People
who buy the Ouya do.

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jiggy2011
This article basically hits the nail on the head.

Saying that you could just develop for Windows (or even desktop Linux will
have a bigger install base) if you desire openness is a very valid point, but
there is one caveat.

This thing ships with a controller, people who are used to playing action type
console games prefer to use a controller for pretty much every game type
including FPS. Sure you can plug a joypad into a PC but in my experience this
is a shockingly rare thing to find people doing "in the wild".

I have a feeling us on HN are sceptical of this device precisely because we
_want_ it to succeed _in principle_ but have been burned so many times in the
past by "magic open tech" that fails to live upto our expectations.

They might be able to flog some units in the emerging markets, but they better
make sure they are making a profit on the hardware because 99% of those
customers are _not_ going to be buying legit games from your app store.

~~~
gfosco
Rare as it may be, one of the best things I ever bought was the Microsoft
adapter to use wireless XBOX360 controllers on my PC.

I thought the OUYA was a great idea after seeing the Kickstarter video, but
I'm glad there are enough skeptics around to mention that pesky reality.

~~~
jiggy2011
I have done the same, though for some strange reason my Xbox360 pad (an
official one as far as I can tell) actually has a standard USB on the end and
requires an adapter to plug into a 360.

The great thing is that pretty much every game on steam supports it and even
recognises it as a 360 Pad so game tutorials will display the correct labels
and colours for buttons. Works great under Linux too.

What surprises me though is the number of people to whom this ability is
surprising "You're playing a PC game with a joypad? What? how?"

It's also surprising that even gaming specialist manufacturers like alienware
don't offer joypads as an option when building a system.

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charleso
Reminds me of The Phantom video game console from around a decade ago. That
one also promised the universe, with PA declaring their skepticism back in
2003: <http://penny-arcade.com/2003/01/22> <http://www.penny-
arcade.com/2003/08/20/> (the links to the product no longer reference that
device -- it never appeared)

There's nothing wrong with civilly expressing skepticism about overly-
ambitious claims. This article seems to do a good job of doing just that.

------
ahelwer
It's tough to strike a balance between cheerleading and naysaying here. I've
seen the word "scam" thrown around, as well as Roosevelt's bit about the man
in the arena. Since Ouya is asking for _your_ money, just take this as due
diligence before pledging (or not).

The gaming community _really_ likes jumping on hate bandwagons. I don't think
it's productive to drive this brand into the ground before it has its chance.

~~~
stcredzero
_The gaming community really likes jumping on hate bandwagons._

Big swaths of the tech world are like this as well. As a programmer of over 3
decades, I'm wondering if there's something about computer related tech fields
that tends to promote unkind, amoral, and short-sighted outlooks on the world.
Alternatively, there could be an attraction for the segment of the populace
with unkind, amoral, and short-sighted outlooks on the world. Not everyone in
tech is like that, of course, or I'd leave. (This is not to say the PA guys
are like that.)

~~~
shashashasha
I wouldn't jump to say "unkind" and "amoral" but computer related tech fields
do attract very analytical thinkers, who are often more critical than less
analytical types.

~~~
stcredzero
Some of those analytical lack enough humility to avoid the appearance of
thinking themselves infallible.

Then there is a segment of those in tech who think that whatever they can get
away with, they should get away with.

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nestlequ1k
For $99, I sort of see this as my dream emulator platform. Any indie games
that I can get on top of that seems like icing on the cake.

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pyoung
What it really comes down to, is if you think (or hope) that Ouya will
succeed, then give them some money on Kickstarter if you can afford it. If you
do not want Ouya to succeed then don't. If you aren't sure, then wait until it
hits production.

In the mean time, get back to work on your own projects and stop worrying so
much about what other people are doing.

~~~
dalacv
best comment on here

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ChuckMcM
That has to be the clearest analysis yet for the prospects of the Ouya.

~~~
heretohelp
Oh but that can't possibly be, surely all the people who are actual gamers
decrying how silly all this hype is have to be _haters_!

~~~
smackfu
What a nice wet blanket you have.

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tuxidomasx
I was mostly concerned about the controller and how hard it is to get right.
Why not just build it with compatibility with other console controllers,
including the older 8 and 16 bit systems? This way they dont have to worry
about the tricky (and costly) business of designing a controller from
scratch-- its very easy to get it wrong, and I'd think video gamers are most
comfortable with controllers they are used to.

~~~
jiggy2011
You really need to have a standard controller for a console so that developers
know what the hell they are developing for. If I design a game that relies on
an analogue trigger and 6 buttons how do I deal with someone plugging a PS2
controller in, or a NES controller?

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ben1040
Don't most high-end Android phones these days allow you to connect to a TV via
MHL adapter?

It seems like they would be better served (i.e., able to actually deliver a
product at the price point they're pushing) by building a really awesome
controller to play games on the phone you already own, and making an SDK to
extend games to take advantage of it.

~~~
coffeeaddicted
Have you ever seen anyone gather around a mobile phone connected to a TV for
playing? The first step preventing that already is that people don't want to
connect/disconnect hardware constantly.

I acknowledge some points in the article. It will probably be hard/impossible
to make a living making games for this console alone. And I was also already
wondering if they have any chance finishing the software in time when they are
only starting now. But if they manage to release it in time for that price I
wouldn't care much - for 99$ a console that's rootable - that alone sounds
good enough for buying to me. Also I think his worries about porting the input
of games for a controller are overblown, that's not exactly the hardest part
when writing a game.

~~~
jiggy2011
It depends on the game, but controls are a huge part of the game experience
and many types of games are just fundamentally horrible to play on a
particular set of controls. Bad controls will simply ruin a game. I remember
the pain of playing Mortal Kombat on a keyboard for example, also bear in mind
how long it took for consoles to make FPS games tolerable on a controller.
This is worse than that, you might have some luck in porting a touchscreen
game over to mouse control or vice versa, but touch control to gamepad?

How on earth would one play "cut the rope" on a controller?

I agree though that it might well be worth the $99 just for use as a media box
and to play old arcade ROMs on but the question is whether that is a viable
business model for them?

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seclorum
I don't get why Ouya is such a hot story right now, but Open Pandora is not?

<http://openpandora.org/>

The Pandora can do all of the things Ouya dreams about (already has done it),
has a working software eco-system, has an app-store in place, and heck .. the
Pandora even has its own development tools onboard. All you need to develop
for Pandora is available: on the Pandora.

So I think this Ouya thing is one thing altogether (Hype circle), but the
Pandora .. its not getting the love it deserves. Honestly, I couldn't be more
excited for a next-generation gaming platform architecture than I am for the
Pandora ..

~~~
chucknelson
That thing is atrocious. I don't mind this whole "open" movement, but that
hardware is just not desirable. Is it a joke of some sort? The linux
screenshot is just...weird.

~~~
seclorum
Its a lot lovelier once you've got it in your hands and realize its actually
very, very comfortable to hold for hours on end - unlike iPads/iPhones/most
other mobile devices.

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nhangen
I'm really surprised by the amount of criticism this project is getting,
especially compared to the dozens of other Kickstarter 'hits' that I felt were
more deserving of said critique.

The real question to me is this - can this team pull it off? If yes, then I
don't care about the state of the project, only that the team is invested in
it. If the team cannot, then yes, that's a real problem. However, I don't see
anyone talking about the team at all.

~~~
reidmain
My biggest critique with this KickStarter is they are promising hardware in
eight months where only a single prototype exists currently. Like the article
says, these guys are not Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc so I don't have very
much faith in them actually hitting their target date.

I could easily see this shipping on time but with tons of bugs in the hardware
or shipping 10 months late because they didn't realize how complicated it was.

Even the Elevation Dock KickStarter, which was the first KickStarer golden
goose, has had serious delays and they are building a simple iPhone dock.

~~~
nhangen
Sure, but that's becoming par for the course. You could easily blame the
backers as much as you could the creators. I've backed many projects that were
much simpler and still had huge delays...Pogo's Tibet remix as an example.

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modeless
Ouya is going to kill the Kickstarter brand. These guys have no clue how to
manufacture any hardware and are seriously underestimating the difficulty of
turning a prototype into an assembly line. There will be many delays and
broken promises on the way to a very late and very disappointing final
product, and the whole well-publicized ordeal is going to poison Kickstarter
in people's minds.

~~~
esbwhat
"We break things. Julie Uhrman has been in games for a long time, at Vivendi
Universal, IGN, GameFly, and other places. Yves Behar is the award-winning
designer of Jambox, One Laptop per Child, and many others. There are plenty of
other people involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who
they are."

Sounds like they have hardware experience

~~~
modeless
Concept design and manufacturing are completely different things. I'm talking
about manufacturing experience, and they have none. Zero. You can be sure
they'd have mentioned it if they did. Let me address their only revealed
experience: "Vivendi Universal, IGN, GameFly," those are all 100% software.
"[They] would get fired if we tell you who they are", really? They're asking
for millions of our dollars and they aren't confident enough to even minimally
risk their current jobs by publicly supporting their own project? That's a
huge red flag.

The console industry is littered with spectacular failures of this type, and
I'm before I believe this one is worth investing actual money in I'm going to
need more than Yves Behar, Julie Uhrman who's "been in the game industry for
years" (exclusively on the software side), and several mysterious people who
refuse to even be named.

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programminggeek
There is one thing the Ouya has that no other niche console/handheld has ever
had... an existing base of software already written and ready to run on it.

Seriously, if you are an android dev you'll need to retool your controls, not
port the entire game from one language/platform to anther. That is one of the
easier problems to solve as far as making this product a hit.

Really, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point Gamestop buys the Ouya so
that they can get in on the digital revenue before their whole business model
shuts down. Why do you think Amazon has their own android app store?

Software sales are obviously going, going, gone digital, so Best Buy, Amazon,
Gamestop are going to have to become digital stores to sell software/games or
they become irrelevant like record stores did a decade ago.

It might be too late, but don't be surprised if BestBuy/Gamestop buy or build
something just like the Ouya.

~~~
jiggy2011
Are you suggesting that the porting is the difficult part, or redesigning the
controls is the difficult part. If the former I will refer you to my previous
post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4231971>

~~~
vshade
There are a lot of games that would be better played using an actual joystick,
heck, lots of them have virtual joysticks or virtual buttons. There are very
few games that were really designed based on touch controls.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not sure that is the case, pretty much every game I have installed on my
android phone is designed specifically for touch controls, some of them would
work OK on a mouse. Very few would be playable on a controller.

Regards joysticks, the only games that I can think of that would be better on
a joystick would be flight simulators which probably partly explains the lack
of "serious" flight sims available on consoles.

~~~
vshade
I meant controller when I said joystick, it is the common name where I live.
The majority of games I have on my android have virtual buttons and virtual
sticks, some are ports of older console games, like Max Payne, GTA 3 and sonic
CD, some are those gameloft action games and some others are action games from
EA and madfinger. I even use my PS3 controller and my device plugged on the tv
to play better some of those games.

------
radley
I know it's very possible for it to be made because $99 Android TV devices
already exist including the new Google TVs and the tiny Android Mini PC. (I'm
also a huge proponent of Android becoming the OS for everything: device,
desktop, TV, cars, & appliances.)

Ouya is the 2nd $99 Android "TV device" I've seen pop up on Kickstarter. The
first project was essentially a Mini PC re-branded for Americans (so I passed
on it).

Ouya has two hurdles:

1) repackaging it in a new container and tossing in a controller all for the
same price. Possible? Sure.

2) Android is such a fast moving platform that their device could be
outdated/outclassed by the time they finish shipping. If Google had a clue,
they'd repackage the Google TV as a gaming station before Xmas.

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jiggy2011
There is of course an alternative explanation for all of this which is that
they don't give a shit about this being a "success" in any commercial or
"market share" sense and simply wanted to hack together a cool piece of
hardware that they wanted themselves and thought they could make that a
reality if enough likeminded people wanted it too.

That could explain why they asked for $1M on kickstarter rather than taking a
chunk of investment the usual way.

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antidaily
Ouya ships March 2013... which will probably be 3 months after Apple and
Google have gaming stores for your TV.

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bluetidepro
Welp, I officially wish this article came out before I pledged on Kickstarter
for an OUYA system. I guess we (people who have pledged) can just hope with
over $4,000,000 from Kickstarter, they can make some of the systems "dreams"
come true! Haha

~~~
evan_
You can revoke a pledge. Go to "Manage Pledge" on the Kickstarter page, and
scroll all the way to the end. There's a link, "Cancel Pledge".

~~~
bluetidepro
Oh, awesome, great to know! Thanks for the FYI!

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chaostheory
As I've already mentioned in another thread, OUYA isn't made to replace the
Xboxes, Wiis, and PS's of the world. OUYA is not for the mainstream masses.
OUYA is a cool and cheap experiment for hackers and developers who like gaming
akin to the venerable GP32 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP32>

~~~
jiggy2011
In that case they better make sure they are turning a profit on the hardware.

------
gaius
I suggest the Penny Arcade guys (who, umm, write a webcomic, what do they know
about anything technical?) have a read of _The Future Was Here_ , the story of
the Commodore Amiga, for a glimpse at how good engineers with a belief in
their mission can go from breadboard to world-beating product almost before
you can blink...

~~~
jsnell
The author of the article is not one of the comic guys, he was the games
journalist of Ars Technica for something like 10 years. Now, that's of course
not a technical merit. But it does perhaps suggest some familiarity with the
games industry...

Perhaps you could come up with some talking points that address the misgivings
presented in the article, rather than attacking the author? Possibly something
a bit more substantial than just comparing this project to one done by
incredibly talented engineers, and backed by the company that had already made
world's best selling computer.

