
Ouya: A New Kind of Video Game Console - shawndumas
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
======
jeremyarussell
It's funny, earlier I read the comments and they were mostly all about what a
stupid idea this was, not a powerful enough system, can't force free, doomed
to fail kind of stuff.

I pledged this morning thinking how unique games are really going to flourish.
How the simple graphic games can come out to be awesome, I mean we all played
the classics right? Those 8-bit marathon games that gave us hours of joy, then
hours more when they remade those games on the new system with the same old
graphics, barely a remake in fact just a future port. And, I've sat as a gamer
and watched all my friends buy those classic games over and over again, same
graphics, same sound, same awesome gameplay.

So now we have this chance to get a lesser powered system out to nearly
everyone, people that can't afford to game but wouldn't mind the hours of time
and boredom that is swept away by even the most casual of games. (heard of
Zuma? Plants v zombies? etc.)

I remember this morning seeing all the negative comments. It's 1:55 PM my time
now,and OUYA is at 938,733 dollars. Clearly minutes away from being fully
funded, with another 29 days they'll go over their asking by three to five
times (if any of the kickstarters I've watched grow like this act as a valid
indicator, which they should). So I'm left wondering, how many people will be
eating the words they said today? I don't think it'll be OUYA, or any of the
people that have backed the project already, waiting for the day that this
console fills in a niche that the big console makers never even considered
needing filled. I for one can't wait.

As of finishing this post, the project is fully funded at $953,325.

~~~
LesZedCB
As of 10:44 pm eastern time, it has increased to 1.8M. Sounds like people
believe in this to me...

~~~
Albuca
And now its about to hit the 3million mark. $2,935,681

------
netcan
Sounds like a great idea with lots of potential for spinoffs.

Basically any Android TV device with a dedicated appstore connected to your
credit card has lots of potential. Its a continuations of the entertainment
merge (radio, tv, video, games, etc, social web) and thats the correct general
direction.

Being based on Android also opens up the possibilities for local variations.
In Ireland for example, a great/cheap TV solution is SoarView (6 free-to-air
terrestrial Irish TV channels) + FreeSat (UK free-to-air satellite channels) +
Netflix (7 euro a month currently). That's not very common though because the
hardware is crap and you need someone to come in and set it all up for you.
You'll probably have 2 boxes & 3 remotes and need to press lots of buttons to
get to everything. "Cable" companies wil spread out the cost, manage the
hardware and get Irish & British TV into the same remote.

A box that can pleasantly handle it all and "ephemeralize" it (thus doing all
the stuff we haven't thought of yet) would be excellent. Add in some gaming
that appeals to wii people and some that appeals to facebook scrabble people
and you've got a bomb.

Gaming is probably the best angle and any angle will do. Once you are shipping
something that people connect to their tv, there are all sorts of things you
can do. I'm glad to see experimentation going on here. I'm also glad to see
that its getting to be in the reach of small companies.

------
nik_0_0
In the FAQ, they define free to play as "every game will be free to play: what
this means is that there will at least be a free demo, or you’ll be able to
play the entirety of the game for free but may have access to additional
items, upgrades, or other features that come at a cost."

I do believe that the first part is unequivocally not free to play... Xbox
Live doesn't get to call itself free to play because it offers demos for
almost every game. The 2nd part is certainly the freemium model that has been
heavily used (and quite successful in my eyes).

But I think it is important to clarify that the system does not only feature
free-to-play games, but there are paid games that offer demos. They do mention
that by all games being "free" they mean that developers will be forced to
include some playable content for the user, but I just do not agree with that
wording, it could be much clearer.

Having said that, this looks cool :)

~~~
ricardobeat
That FTP part really curbed my enthusiasm. I very much prefer paying some
reasonable price for a game I liked, think is cool or just admire the
developer than feeling compelled to "unlock" stuff. That's true even if I end
up not playing it at all later. Unlocking/going pro/etc still has a scammy
feeling to it.

~~~
wmf
Do you feel that way about demos?

------
autarch
I figure for $99 this is a fun experiment. If it sucks, I backed an
interesting idea and I'm not out much money. If it doesn't suck, I have a neat
new toy to play with.

At the very least, it might let me drop my XBox Live Gold subscription, which
I only have so I can stream Netflix.

------
primitur
If you're looking for a new kind of video game console, and haven't already
heard of it, then you need to know about the Open Pandora:

<http://openpandora.org/>

This device is, really, amazing.

I have two. I will tell you whats so amazing about this GAMES machine: it has
everything you need to build games, already onboard.

Both of my machines are set up with their own on-board development
environments - full C/C++ compiler, and so on.

I have been able to port a metric tarball-tons' worth of games - and other -
applications _with the device itself and nothing else_.

You can use things like LOAD81 (<http://github.com/antirez/load81/>) on the
Pandora
[http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=LOAD81](http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=LOAD81),
and it really rocks.

You can put python (or rather, upgrade the existing python), ruby, haskell,
&etc. on it. With great ease.

Also, you can play a hell of a lot of nice games, too. The free (in all
meanings of the word) spirited community has constructed its own a-massing
collection of titles:

<http://repo.openpandora.org/>

Emulators? There are very, very few emulators that are not already running on
the Pandora; - I have 27 different 'retired architectures' software archives
on one of my Pandoras.

New-school games? Well, they're out there, and happening. The Pandora may not
have an Android App Stores' worth of apps, yet, but most everything thats in
the existing repo, is quality. There are some true gems .. just check the
public repo top-10 list at repo.openpandora.org, to see what I mean.

(EDIT: Actually, the Pandora can run Android just fine:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHPxE9om3Hc>)

Did I mention: 11 hours battery life, and it fits in my coat pocket? Oh, it
has two nice little analog nubs, a workable keyboard, and a decent
touchscreen.

The _next_ generation Pandora might be an almighty beast worth looking at, but
the Ouya, well .. it has some serious catching up to do.

~~~
tatsuke95
[http://www.gp2x.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/223?osC...](http://www.gp2x.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/223?osCsid=b863faffac07b98a020289c53e6a08bd)

Sort of neat, but...

That thing is $750, plus shipping. Every gaming system I can think of is
cheaper than that, including decent desktop systems. Almost everything you
describe can be achieved on a low end laptop, which has more utility, for half
the price. Outside of "fitting in my pocket", I can't see any practical reason
to own a gadget like that. Am I missing something?

~~~
seclorum
It is only expensive now because its a startup. Once the economy of scale
tips, with more users, it will get cheaper..

------
mtgx
Why isn't Google making every single Google TV set top box like a mini-Android
console? It's not like they would have to change a whole lot about it. Just
make sure it has a high-end ARM chip, 2 controllers included, and they
actually try to give incentives to developers to port their games for it,
which should be a minimal amount of coding if they already have an Android
game.

~~~
formatjam
Good Question. I think the majority issue is: 1\. Gaming in Android isn't that
impressive yet. 2\. They are def. working on it. But they don't want to make
so many enemies (Sony) before they have a chance. For them, it is not a huge
profitable item. Getting the Google TV into the living room is more important.
But I can see Google TV eventually will become a console and OuYA will die
out.

~~~
mtgx
It doesn't need to die out. They can continue to make the hardware, and adopt
the new software. Not sure about the whole free-games thing, though.

~~~
formatjam
Interesting. I thought about this. I think they will have their own market and
not open to the official android market so that they will the cut of profit
that games generated.

------
nemo1618
>We get it – smartphones and tablets are getting all the new titles – they're
"what's hot.” The console market is pushing developers away. We’ve seen a
brain drain: some of the best, most creative gamemakers are focused on mobile
and social games because those platforms are more developer-friendly. And the
ones who remain focused on console games can’t be as creative as they’d like.

Weird...I've this appeal many times before, but always with
s/smartphone/console and s/console/pc.

The whole "Deep down, you know your best gaming memories happened in the
living room" bit reminds me of "Don't reduce big screen movies to a household
TV" and "Surf the Internet, swim in magazines" campaigns. Can you imagine if
this was coming from a bigger name like Sony or Nintendo?

Sorry, just thinking out loud.

------
agentultra
Well if I backed the $700 level and got a pre-release version of this thing,
I'd have to sell a game at $5 to 140 people in order to make my money back on
the hardware. Considering there are already (as I am writing this) > 15k
backers I think it's fairly safe to assume that with the promised promotion
that I could at least make that money back. If I don't get paid for all the
time and effort I put into making the game... oh well. I like making games so
it's not time wasted even if I don't ultimately get paid for it. Sounds like a
cool hobby project at least.

And what if it does take off?

For a growing population of gamers there is no need for highly optimized
hardware designed for crunching polygons and shaders. Not everyone wants to
play CoD: Modern Hate Machine 5 Extreme. It would seem that this project is
hedging its bets that this population of gamers is large enough to support
building a specialized hardware platform for these types of games that they
like. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

I think I side with @notch
(<https://twitter.com/notch/status/220971663003623427>): it would be awesome
if this console does well. I think having a low-barrier development platform
with wide adoption and a captive audience would be great. As it stands I can't
just make a game for XBLA -- I have to suffer in obscurity in the indie store
or create a real corporation with funding and a history of decent games and
pitch my idea. Neither option is very attractive. I can't even imagine what
developing for the PS3 would be like (as I haven't done any, but I'd imagine
it would not be very fun). So I hope this project does do well. I think it
will open a lot of doors and create new markets. That isn't really a bad thing
for anyone.

------
kevingadd
Feels like amateur hour.

I would honestly be shocked if they can ship a console with even those specs
along with a controller and all the assorted bits and pieces you need, to an
end user for $99 without eating some hidden costs themselves (which, if their
budget is under a million, doesn't seem like something they're going to do).
I'm not a manufacturing expert, so maybe I'm missing something enormous here,
but given the history of console manufacturers taking a loss to sell bundled
software, and the high list price of android devices, I don't see any evidence
to support that their target price is remotely realistic.

Even worse, the hardware specs are just... short-sighted. 8GB of storage is
not remotely enough for a console that has no physical storage medium for
games - Microsoft gets away with selling a 4GB XBox 360 because customers can
pop a DVD into the drive, but anyone who is actually downloading games off the
internet is going to need way more space than 8GB. I've got individual games
on my Android phone that are over a gigabyte, and that's ignoring the amount
of space used by the android OS itself along with other data (like saved
games) - many modern PC games have individual save files that are over 10
megs. That stuff adds up. If you force players to add/remove games from their
system in order to fit into 8GB, they're going to spend a ton of time waiting
on their internet connections (and you would expect a guy who worked on the
OLPC to know that a lot of people out there don't have fast internet yet.)
USB2 for external storage means that expansion options will be limited -
loading game assets off USB2 would probably have pretty dire performance
consequences.

There's also other assorted details that just make this feel lazy. The buttons
on that controller mockup are only color-coded, which means it will be
difficult (if not impossible) to clearly communicate to a color-blind player
which button is associated with what action - even worse, they use all four
colors, so it will probably affect people with every type of colorblindness.
This is a mistake that none of the other console vendors have made: Microsoft,
Sony, and Nintendo all made sure that each of their buttons has a distinct
shape or letter associated with it so that in-game text and UI can communicate
clearly to anyone who plays.

Furthermore, they show various games in their mockup material - like
Minecraft, and Triple Town, and Shadowgun - but apparently they haven't made
deals with all of these developers to show up in the promotional material (let
alone use the platform), which makes it seem like they really believe they're
just going to ride the Android Market all the way to success. Can they even
provide access to the official Android Market without meeting the requirements
that Google imposes for shipping the Google Experience apps or whatever
they're called?

I could also rant about the fact that they think a Tegra 3 and Cortex A9 is
adequate for a game console, but honestly I'm not worried about that. People
have done amazing things with low-spec hardware before, but it certainly
doesn't help if the hardware is poor along with the other poor decisions on
display here.

~~~
emmett
When I read your post, I feel like I'm reading someone who is hoping for them
to fail. It brings to mind this quote.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again
and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~~~
6ren
Yes. I had a critical initial reaction to OnLive (video games streamed from
the cloud) because of latency; also, it has such lovely benefits for
publishers that they'd _wish_ it to be true... but when better networks and
more local servers arrive, they will be placed to own it. They might even
overtake "consoles". They just need to survive - which they can do, because
for _some_ use-cases, for _some_ people, the present service is useful.

Similarly, the next generation of SoC GPUs (e.g. PowerVR G6200) has
approximately the power of an xbox360's xenos GPU (which seems to have been
enough for players, despite x10 better GPUs on PCs). When that arrives (next
year), these guys will be there - they just need to survive. Another relevant
quote:

    
    
      No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

------
edintheforth
I admire them for trying to bring a cheap platform for (indie) gaming and
such, but I don't get some points:

They are claiming that "all the games will be free-to-play" and then in the
FAQ they rectify it by saying that all games will have at least a "free-demo",
which is not F2P, but nonetheless it means it will offer both kinds.

Now let's see what kind of games they might bring to this platform: most of
the F2P games that are available are either MMORPGs or some kind of FPS
(ruling out flash games, of course). You don't find these formats on consoles,
and why? Keyboard and mouse, which is totally the opposite of what they are
trying to offer. Even though there are a lot of FPS games on consoles, there
is not a single one the F2P format.

The other kind of games (the non-F2P) will be mostly indie games, which is
great. But still limited to the use of a controller! There are some amazing
ones like Super Meat Boy and Bastion, but not many!

------
tjader
Why does the period in "Hackers welcome." link to
<https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/>?

~~~
aw3c2
Cheap attempt of controversy/publicity I would guess. Fits the presumptuous
feeling I got from the kickstarter text quite well.

------
eperoumal
I don't want to be pessimistic, but given the hardware configuration, what
kind of games this will be able to run ? I don't really feel like playing
Angry Bird HD on my TV forever.

~~~
Tim-Boss
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBl-goBrWno> The Tegra3 quad-core processor
doesn't perform awfully, and comes with 1Gb RAM... I'm not sure how much
better you can get for $95 (lowest backing point to secure a console)!

~~~
pwny
I don't know about others but poor (relative to PC and console) game
performance on mobile games is only acceptable to me because the machine fits
in my pockets.

I don't sit in my living room to play iOS/Android games, the fact that the
device is hooked to a bigger screen won't change that.

Also, they seem to be confusing two target audiences here. People that grew up
with games as a central part of their lives are (in my experience) people that
STILL play a lot of games and prefer to do so on consoles and a PC, while
people who are into social and mobile games are mostly casual people that
won't be bothered to sit in front of a big screen to play anyways.

I've felt like the console market was ready for some change for a while but
envisioned it as a kind of Steam-console more than a big screen phone. That
being said, I wish the best of luck to these guys, it's an ambitious and
exciting project.

~~~
jerf
Did you watch the video? I'm not sure what resolution that is pushing, but it
clearly beats the Wii hands down and looks to be roughly competitive with the
XBox 360/PS3. If that's 1080p it may even have a slight edge on them. (But I'd
guess 720p. For the most part on a TV console it's not really worth pushing
twice the pixels for such a marginal image quality gain.)

~~~
pwny
Pushing 1080p off a mobile GPU on a console with 1Gb of RAM is cool and all
but good luck doing anything else impressive besides... well pushing 1080p.
This thing is closer to a phone than a real console.

~~~
mtgx
The consoles are 7 years old. Mobile games are getting pretty close to their
performance. All the new ARM GPU architectures coming out this year and next
year will support OpenGL ES 3.0 (OpenGL 3.2 features) and OpenCL 1.1.

Next year's hardware should also be 4-5x faster in GPU performance than Tegra
3 (that includes Tegra 4, as well as other chips), and around 300 gigaflops
each, which I think already surpasses the Xbox 360 and PS3, or it's around as
powerful.

If Google and many of their partners would put these chips in $99 set top
boxes/consoles, and let them play 3D Android games, it could disrupt the
console market, simply by flooding the market with the help of multiple
manufacturers, a low price, and a decent gaming platform, that could only grow
bigger if it takes off, not unlike how Google dominates the smartphone market
through the sheer number of Android devices released by many, many
manufacturers.

I just hope Google is smart enough to recognize this and actually go for it,
instead of focusing solely on their "smart TV" strategy with their Google TV
boxes.

~~~
wmf
_Next year's hardware should also be 4-5x faster in GPU performance than Tegra
3_

Which makes it extra-stupid for Ouya to plan to ship a Tegra 3 console in
2013.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Ship early, ship often. Better to ship than wait for someone else to ship
before you (like duke nukem forever)

~~~
wmf
They should be able to meet the same schedule with Tegra 4 or quad Krait
(although at higher cost). So someone else may be shipping a box that's 4x the
performance at the same time.

------
alttab
I don't understand all the negativity in this thread. Sure, nit-pick it to
death for this and that. But if this was executed correctly it would change
the gaming world and collapse multiple console markets within the timeframe of
one console generation.

I learned to program by making games... so this is exciting to see!

------
Kiro
Why was the title changed from OUYA to Ouya? OUYA is the name.

------
lukifer
I'm surprised they're not also pursuing media center features, either baked-in
or through third parties. Netflix clearly wants to live on every box in the
universe, and the open-ish stack lends itself well to Flex, XMBC, etc. It
increases the value prop while the game library is still being built up (how
many people bought a PS3 because it doubled as a Blu-Ray?)

Also: how the heck is Ouya pronounced? Feels a little awkward to say, like the
first year of the Wii. It's important that people are able to talk (and brag!)
about your product.

~~~
blahedo
> _Also: how the heck is Ouya pronounced?_

From the FAQ:

 _OOO-yah. Apparently it doesn't have the most pleasant meaning in Swahili._

~~~
Wingman4l7
Anyone know what the meaning is? I'm curious to know. They don't say, Google
Translate doesn't have a clue, and a quick Google didn't turn up anything...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think its 4 symbols to use for button identification.

------
vibrunazo
Kicktraq, which calculates estimates for how much a project will make
extrapolating from the current rate. Are estimating that OUYA will reach $39m
if they can keep this pace.

[http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-
vid...](http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-
console)

~~~
modarts
Kind of curious as to why they'd use a linear extrapolation.

------
aw3c2
a) "8GB of internal flash storage & USB 2.0 (one)" That does not sound like it
would be too useful if you want to play more than 2 games (exaggerated).

b) Why would I invest into a project where "there are plenty of other people
involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are"?

~~~
mtgx
We're talking about Android games here running on an ARM processor. They are a
lot smaller than a PC game. I've only seen a couple of games that approach the
500 MB mark on Android, and there may be a few bigger ones I haven't tried.
But most 3D Games should only be a few hundred MB at most.

~~~
aw3c2
If I would buy such device I would want big games and emulators. You easily
fill up 8GB with emulators.

~~~
ralfn
It has a free ssd slot.

------
JVIDEL
I love the idea and I have talked about the possibility of an ARM-based
console for the past 2 years, but the Ouya is one of those cases where the
execution doesn't seems right.

There's a lack of differentiation, it has no exclusives like big consoles have
which can be critical to move units. The GTA series alone moved more PS2s than
any other games in that console, and it had tons of great titles. By the time
GTA3 made it to the Xbox the PS2 was getting the blockbuster San Andreas 8
months before any other platform did. In comparison most of the games on
display for the Ouya are phone/tablet games. The anti-console crowd argues
that people wont buy consoles anymore despite the fact that big consoles like
the X360 have exclusive games not even available on PC. Simply put, why should
I buy a Ouya if I can get the _exact same games_ on my phone or tablet?

I don't really understand the whole "hackers can modify the hardware"-part,
wasn't the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem due to multiple hardware
variations the reason why many developers stick to iOS? Wouldn't homogeneous
hardware like that of the Kindle Fire make more sense in this situation?

Since it's a console and not a handheld portable device I don't see why it
couldn't have a HDD for storage instead of the paltry 8GB it has. It could
easily pack 500GB in a 2.5 drive, leaving tons of space to store games, but
with just 8GB less than 10 1GB games will use up all of the storage space, so
users will have to delete those games and then redownload them every time they
want to play, and waiting for a 1GB download is way slower than DVD loading
times on consoles, let alone HDD times.

~~~
slantyyz
I get the impression that the Ouya's bread and butter will be coming from
casual gaming. Hardcore gamers will always want to stick to a beefier console
anyways.

Someone wanting to play Tetris, Canabalt or other low-time-investment game is
probably plenty satisfied with something like the Ouya.

~~~
JVIDEL
That's even worst: a casual's only reason to buy a console is to get the games
that they _cannot_ get on their phones and tablets

Why buy additional hardware like the ouya if it's the same exact same
experience?

------
blahedo
I read the Kickstarter page, then read the HN comments, and then went back and
refreshed the Kickstarter page, and in perhaps twenty minutes, it had jumped
almost a thousand pledges and over $100,000. That's... impressive.

EDIT: Another hour, another couple thousand pledges, another couple hundred
thousand dollars, and it's funded. (And they bumped up the $99 pledge point
from 5K to 10K.) That was fast.

------
shadowmint
I was really excited about this until I saw the specs; they seem singularly
unremarkable.

1 gig of ram, and a say what, a T33 maybe?

Am I completely off the deep end here or is that like an order of magnitude
less powerful (abit with more ram) than say, an xbox.

So its cheap. Big deal, so is the Pi and say,
[http://www.androidauthority.com/remember-the-74-android-
pc-n...](http://www.androidauthority.com/remember-the-74-android-pc-now-it-
has-a-53-little-brother-95354/)

I'm kind of dubious about the value proposition of something that wants to be
a full blown console, but is basically just a slight lower spec'd version of
my phone.

If you want to get me excited, stick 8 GB of ram on that thing and an intel
based 3.2 Ghz cpu with a gpu that can run say, UT. That would effectively !!!!
all over the state of the art for android devices AND consoles.

This? It'll be obsolete by the time it even exists.

~~~
mtgx
No, it's not an order of magnitude less powerful. Tegra 3 games look almost
console-like. And you can play a lot of older emulator games on this, too.
Next year's ARM hardware should all but match the Xbox 360 hardware
performance.

~~~
sixbrx
Xbox will probably be refreshed next year, though.

~~~
mtgx
Sure, but it will cost a few hundred dollars more. And many people might not
want these just for games, but for media stuff, and they would find the $99
price a lot more attractive than $300-$400 for such tasks.

~~~
sixbrx
Not trying to denigrate the new device, just pointing out that comparisons are
being made of a new device with a device which is near the end of its rather
long refresh cycle. Of course that tends to favor the new device. I expect the
xbox to jump ahead in performance by a significant amount after the refresh.

------
RutZap
It already reached 200K! WOW! Looking forward to this one...

------
jiggy2011
I want this to succeed and it's high time somebody tried something like this.

I see 2 problems though, firstly the price. It's simply too cheap and this is
reflected in the hardware specs, if they wanted enthusiasts they really need
to bump up the hardware. A console with a small SSD and a desktop class
nVidia/ATI GPU would be way more exciting.

The other problem will be getting "killer apps" which is a huge part of
console marketing, would the Xbox have been so successful without HALO? the
wii without "wii sports"?

This is where having a more "open" console provides disadvantages because they
are in a weak position to score exclusivity deals since MS , Sony or Nintendo
could simply see which are the most popular titles on the platform and strike
deals with the developers to port them over to their platforms.

~~~
learc83
>if they wanted enthusiasts they really need to bump up the hardware.

It looks like this thing is aimed squarely at indie game developers, and the
type of people who play indie pc games. Indie gamers aren't really known for
their craving for top of the line graphics.

Using android saves them a lot of time and putting it on an arm platform
allows it to easily run all of the popular android games.

There isn't a commodity SOC that comes with a desktop class GPU, so I don't
see anyway they could realistically do that--it would require a whole lot more
than a million bucks to develop it.

>...most popular titles on the platform and strike deals with the developers
to port them over to their platforms.

This would a lot of time. Since these games are written for android a port
will probably be a complete rewrite (see minecraft for x-box), and take a year
at least.

Why wait a year to play a game when you can get access for only $99?

Sure eventually console makers might make tools and processes to make it
easier for indie developers to get android games onto their consoles, but that
would be fantastic (and would accomplish the goals of this project anyway).

~~~
jiggy2011
_It looks like this thing is aimed squarely at indie game developers, and the
type of people who play indie pc games. Indie gamers aren't really known for
their craving for top of the line graphics._

I'm not sure there is much of a demographic of people who are "indie gamers" ,
most people who play indie games also play AAA games, so a console for Indie
games only doesn't seem like it would have a huge target market.

 _Using android saves them a lot of time and putting it on an arm platform
allows it to easily run all of the popular android games._

Android stuff is mainly Java, so I can't imagine that porting would be that
huge a deal especially considering there are also ports of android for x86.
You must also keep in mind that most android games are designed around
touchscreens, so it's not like they are suddenly going to have a big library
of games that are playable with a controller without significant redesign.

 _There isn't a commodity SOC that comes with a desktop class GPU, so I don't
see anyway they could realistically do that--it would require a whole lot more
than a million bucks to develop it._

Couldn't this be mostly done by using a motherboard from a laptop or similar?
Since it's a console, space and weight are less of a factor than with a tablet
etc.

 _This would a lot of time. Since these games are written for android a port
will probably be a complete rewrite (see minecraft for x-box), and take a year
at least._

This is basically a chicken/egg problem. Indie developers are unlikely to
develop around a platform that does not already have significant user base.
Most of the popular indie titles, supermeatboy , braid etc were developed
around the 360 first because it already had a significant market.

~~~
learc83
>I'm not sure there is much of a demographic of people who are "indie gamers"
, most people who play indie games also play AAA games, so a console for Indie
games only doesn't seem like it would have a huge target market.

It looks like they are trying to take the PC indie game market and bring it to
the TV. It doesn't matter if indie gamers also play AAA games, the point is
(and what I was replying to) that people who play indie games, of whom there
are many, are willing to overlook graphics for gameplay.

>that huge a deal especially considering there are also ports of android for
x86

Almost anything resource intensive is done with the NDK which is in C/C++, if
they used x86 almost no Android games would play out of the box.

>Couldn't this be mostly done by using a motherboard from a laptop or similar?

It could be done, yes. But at _significantly_ more expense. Think about the
price of a mobo, CPU, GPU and RAM. You can get an arm SOC with all the above
included for less than $25--that's how they're able to sell these things for
$99.

>Indie developers are unlikely to develop around a platform that does not
already have significant user base.

That's why the $99 price tag is such a big deal, hopefully it will help them
reach critical mass.

Additionally since it runs android, developers can develop for it as well as
touchscreen android devices with almost no extra effort (for non touchscreen
essential games).

>...developed around the 360 first because it already had a significant
market.

X-box primarily attracted indie developers b/c they made it easier for them
than any other console. But the PC has way more indie games than the X-box
because it is even easier to develop for and distribute (even though there are
way more console gamers than PC gamers).

~~~
jiggy2011
I guess the point is , why would I buy one of these instead of or in addition
to an xbox360. Just being slightly cheaper won't really do it.

Most indie games don't really sell very well and the ones that do will be
ported, Indie games generally also have the advantage of being very easy to
port, especially if you use SDL for the graphics.

Plus anybody who's into really obscure Indie games probably has a PC already.
The advantage AAA consoles have is that they can provide high end PC level
graphics for much less money than a high end PC because the are subsidesed.

They might have more luck making something for the casual gaming market and
consentrate on making an innovating controller that works well for exiting
android touch screen games but can be used at a distance from the screen.

~~~
learc83
>why would I buy one of these instead of or in addition to an xbox360

They've just passed $1,000,000 on kickstarter, so it looks like around 10k
people have decided to buy one.

>The advantage AAA consoles have is that they can provide high end PC level
graphics for much less money than a high end PC because the are subsidized.

That's not really true except for the first year they come out. After that PC
hardware outpaces them, and the only advantage is that it's easier to use and
it sits in your living room. Look at the Wii, it wasn't anywhere near PC level
hardware even when it came out. In fact the next gen of consoles won't really
be faster than top of the line PCs even when they debut.

The developer is arguing that the advantage consoles have is TV access (easy
TV access). So she's looking to combine the TV access of a console with the
ease of development of a PC. And it looks like there is a sizable number of
people who agree with her.

Look at the sales so far. 10k units presold in a few hours, the X-box 360 only
sold 300k units its first month in North America, and that was with a huge
advertising campaign and an actual product on store shelves.

They also don't need to beat x-box, I'd wager that almost anyone who would buy
this will buy it in addition to X-box.

From the results, clearly there's a market here.

>Indie games generally also have the advantage of being very easy to port,
especially if you use SDL for the graphics.

Why wait for the game to be ported when this thing is only $99.

>Just being slightly cheaper

It's _half_ the price of the cheapest 360, and there's no xbox live
subscription fee. The average game price will be much cheaper as well.

The other thing I think you're missing, is that most of the I know _run out_
of games to play. If this thing is just provided 10% extra content over what
they have now, they'd spend $99.

------
DanBC
_"The entire first production run of consoles will have YOUR USERNAME and
BACKER NUMBER ENGRAVED INTO IT"_

Well, at $10,000 that's an expensive barrier but I hope they're carefully
checking those usernames.

------
jere
I find it interesting that when someone gets a chance to build a controller
from scratch in 2012, it ends up looking essentially no different than one
from 1997: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Analog_Controller>

On a completely separate note, this might be a great reason to target
android... if it works.

~~~
GuiA
The human hands are notoriously hard to design for; controllers are a very
hard to improve design, much like computer mice.

~~~
sigkill
I wonder how comfortable it'd be if the controllers were split in the center
and the resultant looked like dual nunchucks. You could join them by a cable
and add motion detection too. Since the left and right hands are essentially
now independent to move, the developers have a lot more creative freedom with
movement controls.

~~~
GuiA
Are you thinking about this? :)

<http://i.imgur.com/lpDqH.jpg>

~~~
sigkill
Well not EXACTLY that, but close :D

Just imagine taking your normal 360 controller and split it along the center.
Now add gyroscope/accelerometer and two tracking cameras/LEDs (just like the
WiiMotes).

------
9999
In spite of the pronunciation guide to the name of this console, I choose to
pronounce it OOHHHHH YEEEEEAAAH in Macho Man Randy Savage's voice.

Cheap hardware, open platform, and a decent looking controller. I would buy
one, and I know a dozen other people who will too. OOHHHHH YEEEEEAAAH!

------
makepanic
I'm wondering how they try to solve the problem of getting a touch optimized
game to work fine with a analog controller. I know that they said something
about a touchscreen, but havn't shown some sort of concept for it.

~~~
meej
This reminds me of one of the problems with the never-released Infinium Labs
Phantom console -- making PC games designed with a 2ft UI playable at a
distance of 10 feet in the living room.

This project's goals strike me as quite similar to the Phantom's, actually,
but with mobile games instead of PC games. And inverse problems -- Infinium
had the UI problem but their controls were pretty well figured out, while
OUYA's UI situation seems fine but the controls may present a challenge.

------
EternalFury
In a way, I want to invest in this. Yet, something in the back of my mind
tells me it would not be an investment, but a transfer of cash from me to
them...with no product at the end of the bargain.

~~~
wmf
That's just how Kickstarter works. Everyone should understand that before
putting down any money.

~~~
EternalFury
2 years from now, it's going to be interesting to see what percentage of
projects actually delivered on their promises.

In this particular case, time to market is going to be super critical. They
must get to market within the next 9 months or these hardware specifications
will be laughable and Android 5+ will already be out there.

------
wtracy
I wonder how hard it will be to write an Android app that's compatible with
both the OUYA controller, and the Xperia Play keypad?

------
kayoone
current android smartphones have similar specs and plug into TVs via mini-HDMI
and can connect to PS3 controllers for example. But i still like the concept
:)

------
bitwize
Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair. There's too much input and audio
latency for it to be a serious gaming platform.

~~~
rrreese
Will that not change with Jelly Bean and Project butter?

~~~
byproxy
They're doing triple-buffering and vsync with Project Butter, which, if I
recall correctly, increases input lag.

~~~
Garoof
Hmm? I might not know excactly what you're referring to and so on, but...

I guess you increase input lag if you're doing vsync and double buffering and
your drawing things can't keep up with the refresh rate (so framerate gets
halved and that).

With vsync and triple buffering, compared to vsync off, you should only
(potentially) miss out on stuff like "I could have drawn the bottom third of
this new screen I've rendered one frame earlier".

------
Tichy
Why not just wait for Google TV?

~~~
mtgx
I don't think Google has even made Google TV open source yet, probably because
it's still based on Honeycomb. Also, unfortunately, Google doesn't seem
interested to want to promote their Google TV set top boxes as mini-consoles,
other perhaps than mentioning it in the bullet list *run Play Store games.

------
cooldeal
The UI seems have a lot of similarity to the XBox 360 Metro UI, Windows 8 and
Zune, even the fonts.

[http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_ga...](http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_gallery_post.jpg)

~~~
Sunlis
Personally, I really like the new Xbox360 dashboard. Once I got the hang of
it, I found it very easy to move around and get to what I want quickly. Using
triggers for "tab" navigation makes a lot of sense.

If that's (partially, at least) what they're basing their UI off of, then I'm
all for it.

------
gcb
Everything sounds fine, except being Android based.

Worst platform ever.

Also good luck getting most of the hardware like game developers do with java.

~~~
learc83
Android has an NDK that allows you to write native code in C\C++. Most of the
resource intensive code for Android games is native.

That's why you can't play most of the games if you have an android phone with
a MIPS processor (they're all compiled for ARM).

------
fyolnish
heh.

------
nates
The real mistake is Free to play...

~~~
Garoof
But then the "free to play" part doesn't mean much.

From the FAQ:

"For gamers, every game will be free to play: what this means is that there
will at least be a free demo"

So it's free to play in the way that a great number of games not generally
considered free to play are free to play. Or in the way the XBLA is a free to
play platform or something.

------
ezy
Oh look, AndroidTV.

Prediction: Sidelined by the AppleTV in 6 months.

EDIT: More detail: What do you think will happen when Apple comes out with an
SDK for AppleTV, folks? I suppose the only thing missing is the controller.
:-)

~~~
Danieru
Apple is not going to let the AppleTV run iOS apps. If only because the mess
of resolutions and aspect ratios you find in everyday TVs.

Thus without the iOS ecosystem Apple would be competing on specs and
marketing. They could do it but they would be giving OUYA a run for its money.

Besides, 6 months is a long time in mobile land.

