
The Ouya works, it’s here, and it’s heading your way - richeyrw
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-ouya-works-its-here-and-its-heading-your-way-our-first-look-at-the-fini
======
danso
According to the Kickstarter page, the Ouya was due out in March 2013:

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

I'm pretty sure I was one of the many naysayers who said the Ouya would never
make that launch date. Hell, I once ordered underwear from a Kickstarter
clothing outfit and that came at least three months late. I've supported
several Kickstarters and none of them have delivered the physical goods within
two months of their promise (I've even had one delayed by a year). The Ouya is
late by a couple of weeks, if even that.

Congrats to Ouya for meeting their goal, here's hoping that their system is a
success.

~~~
eropple
The reports of system problems are already rolling in, though. In particular
it seems that the controller has perceptible input lag; that's an immediate
killer for pretty much any gaming-related product.

They might have shipped, but it remains to be seen if they shipped something
that's any good.

~~~
jonny_eh
I don't know where this is coming from. I can't perceive any lag in my unit
when playing all sorts of games. I've hooked up an xbox 360 controller and
there's no difference. There's no more input lag on an ouya than on an xbox
360 as far as I can tell.

There are a couple games built using an older version of the ouya Unity plugin
that introduced some lag, so that might explain it.

Full disclosure: I am an employee of OUYA. But any developer that has had a
dev unit for the past 3 months can chime in. We never got this feedback until
a couple people in the press brought it up.

~~~
jader201
_> I don't know where this is coming from._

Polygon's hands-on review mentions this latency, along with a few other
criticisms, including the feel of the controller:

<http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/28/4157602/ouya-feature>

~~~
jonny_eh
I know where the statements are literally coming from, but not why they're
saying it :)

~~~
jonny_eh
@jader I've got over 8000M in Canabalt, a personal high score on my ouya, much
higher than I've ever got on my Nexus 4. If there was significant lag I don't
think that'd be possible.

I've talked to the developers of the ouya port and they're baffled by these
reports as well.

People subconsciously looking for something negative? No clue.

~~~
podperson
Doesn't HDMI give you the new and wonderful possibility of display lag? (This
is particularly pronounced when playing games using iOS devices, especially
older iOS devices, with AirPlay.)

Because the time between a frame being rendered and appearing on screen can
increase, you are reacting slowly to events on the device which you perceive
as _control_ lag when in fact it's _display_ lag.

~~~
mortenjorck
Compliant HDMI shouldn't introduce any latency itself. It's just a digital
signal, no different in principle than the signal from a wired game
controller. Where latency can creep in is a TV's image processing algorithms –
a color adjustment algorithm might add a few milliseconds, an edge enhancement
might add a few more; a 120hz motion compensation system will add a lot more.

Most TVs will allow these to be disabled (often in a specifically labeled
"game mode") but a few may inexplicably not allow them all to be disabled,
hardwired for a certain degree of latency.

AirPlay, on the other hand, introduces a lot of latency because it's
compressing the image prior to transport and uncompressing it on the other
end. This generally introduces significantly more lag than any TV image
processing.

~~~
podperson
Here's an article on how to detect and measure the effect I'm talking about.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/183928/how_to_find_and_fix_in...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/183928/how_to_find_and_fix_input_lag_in_your_HDTV_or_monitor.html)

It's a consequence of using framebuffers in the display device. I mentioed
Airport because it exaggerates the effect, but any digital display will likely
introduce s little extra lag.

~~~
maxerickson
I don't think mortenjorck particularly disagrees with you.

I think they are reading [HDMI] specifically as [HDMI] rather than [The use of
an external display, via HDMI].

------
Cushman
Not a comment on the Ouya specifically, but we live in an odd moment in
computing history when many of us carry powerful computers with us everywhere
we go, but connecting them to our existing peripherals is difficult enough
that we'd rather just buy another with the right plug.

I wonder how long this will last.

~~~
noonespecial
Connectors and physical controllers remain expensive and difficult to make.
"Computers" just fall to the base price of etching a circuit board.

This is the new normal. The connector is the valuable part.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This captures it. The cost to add the transistors to put an ARM CPU in silicon
is < the cost of the metals in the USB and HDMI connector you use to talk to
it.

I gave a talk on the Internet of Things where I tried to communicate this
point clearly, for more and more applications the marginal cost to add a
computer is nearly 0, the marginal cost to add a network is about $0.35, so a
lot of things that wouldn't have had networks or computers in them before
suddenly do.

Back when Sun Micro was trying to get everyone in the Java group to write up
patents on anything they could think of, James Gosling in what was a great
comment on the process wrote up one for Java inside a light switch. He
reasoned it was the most ridiculous patent ever since a light switch from Home
Depot was $1.50 and there was no amount of "coolness" you could add with Java
that would merit building a light switch with its own processor. What he
didn't count on was that the cost of the computer that could run Java would
drop below the cost to make a mechanical switch.

~~~
davidb_
> The cost to add the transistors to put an ARM CPU in silicon is < the cost
> of the metals in the USB and HDMI connector you use to talk to it.

This statement amazes me. It may be true, but it is very counterintuitive to
my experience.

A micro USB connector is about $0.35/unit (for quantites of 1500). An HDMI
connector is about $0.50/unit (similar quantites). These prices are from
Digikey. So, in larger quantites from larger distributors, you could certainly
get cheaper prices. The cheapest ARM processor (cortex M0) is about $0.78/unit
on Digikey. I understand your point is about licensing the ARM design and
integrating it into your silicon, but most low cost devices I've seen have
just been PCBs that integrate these off the shelf components. I would have to
imagine the cost of hiring engineers to do the VLSI design/integration, the
cost of licensing the ARM CPU, and then the cost of fabricating/testing your
silicon would have to exceed integration on a PCB. So, I would then assume
that the processor, while certainly cheap, is still a very substantial portion
of the cost of the device. But, I have no data on the cost of ARM licenses to
back that up. You're definitely right in asserting the trend is cheaper and
cheaper processors, but I don't think we've arrived at the "processors are so
cheap they're basically free" world quite yet.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The difference is that what you and I can buy vs what can be done in the world
of building semi-custom ICs for your consumer gear.

The ARM7/TDMI core is about 100K transistors, that is nominally a square 316
transistors x 316 transistors, which with a 22 nm process is about 3 microns
square. The marginal cost to add 3 square microns to a chip is very nearly 0,
as an example the 'test feature'[1] on a chip the company I worked at in 2000
was 18 square microns and "wasted space" in the final chip. I say its 'nearly'
zero because while the cost to produce the chip doesn't change measurably, the
yield curve does and the 'cost' is the chips that fail due to this extra core
not functioning.

So if you make a consumer electronics gizmo in quantity and it has a semi-
custom chip on it, adding a computer to that chip these days won't make your
semi-custom chip that much more expensive and by having a programability
aspect you can add features without re-spinning the chip.

As for the cost, TSMC offers "add an arm core" to your ASIC as a design
service. I've not been part of a wafer start negotiation for over a decade but
it would not surprise me in the least if they offer to throw that in for free
these days to sweeten the deal.

[1] The "test feature" is a part of the chip that the fab uses to verify the
wafer processing worked correctly, it generally can be probed to with a simple
voltage or current pulse to quickly screen out die which didn't get baked
correctly.

~~~
abecedarius
That doesn't sound right: 22 nm * 316 = 69 microns, giving 69^2 == ~4800
square microns; a transistor is larger than the feature size, and don't wires
take the majority of the area? (Still, that's well under a square millimeter.)

So we haven't _quite_ reached the day Eric Drexler hinted at with "so-called
microcomputers still visible to the naked eye".

~~~
ChuckMcM
Nice catch, in my haste I was dividing and should have been multiplying.
Typical transistor size is 4x feature size. So 316 * 2 * .022 ~ 14 microns and
squared its ~ 200 square microns.

That said, we are still talking about an incrementally small addition to a
chip.

~~~
abecedarius
Oops, I misplaced a decimal myself. That's amazingly small (still without
wiring overhead, of course).

------
BryantD
That's an encouraging review. I am not a backer, because I'm cynical, but
that's quite promising.

This paragraph got me thinking: "I can't point to a single game that would
make one need to buy a system at launch. Much of the value of the OUYA
hardware lies in what you can do with it, from media functions to creating
your own games. It's very possible that a breakout game is coming, and we just
don't know what is it yet, but at this point it's hard to point to one single
game that will get you to buy a unit."

For a traditional console, that would be a huge issue. (Ask Nintendo about the
Wii U launch.) Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo spend a lot of cash making sure
there will be excellent launch titles. Traditional wisdom is that launch
titles drive console sales.

On the other hand, the current generation of smartphones didn't have big
launch titles. Possibly the landscape has changed.

On the third hand, smartphones do other things than play games.

On the fourth hand, sounds like the Ouya might be a strong media console,
depending on how slick that XBMC integration is. C.f. the number of people who
bought Playstation 3s as a Blu-ray player.

In any case, I'm impressed that hardware is shipping and I was wrong to think
it wouldn't. I'd keep an eye on those lag reports, though; I would think Penny
Arcade and Polygon are smart enough to think about video lag as a possibility.

------
duked
I didn't receive mine yet but as a backer I was pretty disappointed to learn
only yesterday (in their last email) that I have to put my CC on file to
download demos. I know some people may not have a problem with that but even
on my Apple Store account I can download free apps without a CC.

From their email: "You'll need a credit/debit card to download games. All
games are still free to try. Your card will only be charged if you buy content
you love. We do want valid payment information for everyone. This is to ensure
that game developers can get paid when you love their game."

The article mention gift card, but I just don't want to pay a gift card that I
may not use just to download demos. Well I guess I'll use the hardware as a
MAME box, and video player.

~~~
DanBC
I have a semi-disposable pre-paid credit card[1] that I load with a small
amount of cash and use only for uncertain transactions.

I agree that storing a CC number has a number of problems (including lack of
parental controls, as mention in the article).

[1] Yes, calling something a credit card when it doesn't allow me any credit,
and doesn't provide some of the advantages of credit cards is annoying.

~~~
foobarqux
Are pre-paid credit cards really indistinguishable from credit cards?

I thought that some merchants didn't accept them for various reasons.

------
bluetidepro
I'm really excited to get mine soon! Does anyone have any resources for people
who want to dabble in creating a game for Ouya? Is it as basic as just making
an HTML5 game with a wrapper of some sort? I would love to see some basic
"how-to" type articles.

~~~
allsystemsgo
I was under the impression that Ouya is running Android? So you'd write it in
Java ideally. I may be wrong though.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You don't need to write Android apps in Java; you can write them in C, or in
any language that can compile to native code and use a C API via FFI.

In any case, for games, you probably want to start learning OpenGL ES.

~~~
pjmlp
The issue with the NDK is that it is still a 2nd class citzen.

The few Android APIs available, are wrappers around JNI calls.

Java is the native language of the platform and Google does not seem willing
to change that, even with the ongoing court issues.

------
tenpoundhammer
I give Ouya 5 million space points for the 'make' option. That's the most
incredible part of this whole system. Develop on the box you play on... It's
just revolutionary. If this thing can catch it might just revolutionize and
destroy the gaming industry as we know it.

~~~
Macsenour
Commodore 64? Develop on it for it. So mebbe the revolution started without
you... in the 80's. :)

I agree that we'll see a lot more games developed in garages and on weekends.
And I think that's where a lot of the unique games come from. But this won't
destroy the gaming industry at all. It will help usher out folks who shouldn't
be in the industry in the first place.

~~~
podperson
Any early computer. Heck, UNIX was developed so the bored team members could
play games on an old minicomputer.

~~~
ghotli
You got a link to back that one up?

~~~
podperson
No I read it in a book years ago. (Perhaps "Hackers", by Steven Levy.) The
story, as I recall, was that Ken Thompson was working at Bell Labs, bored, and
had an old PDP-7 (?) that had no software. He was bored and wanted something
to run space war on, but to get there he needed an OS, compiler, etc.

~~~
mitchellhislop
You are right on that citation. Awesome, awesome book that really opened my
eyes (as a 24 year old) as to just how far things had come.

------
just2n
I was initially thinking the Ouya would be cool. But then I actually thought
about the console space and realized that what was true of my younger years is
no longer the case. In particular, a NES was significantly different than a
Windows or Unix workstation. The console was an entirely different
platform/ecosystem, and in a time where they were reasonably complex by
comparison other computing operating systems.

These days, we're literally running the same software we run on everything
else, but in a little box that has an audio/video output and a port for a
controller. And then when I realized that, I immediately realized that the
console is mostly dead. The only case where this isn't true is where
performance metrics are consistent. This is why development on platforms like
a PS3 or 360 result in shorter dev cycles and higher quality results: the
hardware is all the same. But that matters when you're writing software that
isn't shielded from the system, so with Java, that's a non factor, making Ouya
nothing special.

I believe the next Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo will all have their merits
-- high-end hardware that is consistent for years, which will allow developers
to rapidly build games without having to concern themselves with the lowest
common denominator (it's ridiculous to see software designed to run on a 512MB
1 core machine performing horribly on a 24GB machine with 6 cores, 2 GPUs, and
3GB of GPU memory because it was decided by someone that progressive
enhancement of features would be too expensive a development cost, or for
those high-end features to be completely non-optimized).

For me, I am summarily unimpressed and not excited. For me, this is packaging
Java in yet-another-box that I have to buy. Why can't I just download an app
and play Ouya games on my PC? That's a -1 for Ouya and a +1 for what Valve is
doing with Steam.

~~~
andybak
I'm struggling to understand what you ar saying here to the point where I
wonder if you've missed the biggest factor for the Ouya which is this.

It's that it's part of a (potentially and to a degree actually) huge Android
ecosystem with the same games running on phones, tablets, consoles, Smart TVs,
media centers, mini-PCs and netbooks.

Doesn't that change things?

~~~
jiggy2011
The important part is the controller and potentially a market of games for it.

While it sounds nice to run the same game on a console and a touchscreen I
don't see that working too well in reality.

~~~
andybak
I think the problem is smaller than you think.

Some data points:

1\. Many phone tablet games compromise the controls due to the lack of button
or stick controllers. They would actually be improved by a gamepad.

2\. If a market exists then people will adapt the games to that market. It's
not hard to imagine how many touch-only games could be altered in fairly minor
to be D-pad friendly.

3\. Developers will innovate new approaches to game input if the hardware is
out there.

------
xradionut
Is it wrong of me that I wouldn't mind turning one into a Linux system and not
run Android or play games? (After all this is Hacker News...)

~~~
abraininavat
Why would you do that? The days of yearning for a small hardware platform on
which one can install Linux are over. You can fit Linux on a computer that
would fit in your wallet.

~~~
xradionut
Why not? That's the question to ask. :)

------
JVIDEL
_Personally_ I would have totally buyed the ouya 2 years ago when the average
Android phone was still too weak to play anything more demanding than angry
birds without choking on it. But today, miracast+N4+X360 controller and you
have something that mops the floor with the ouya, game over.

But the biggest irony is that I would really dig this thing if it were a
portable: touchscreen controls suck, there's no way around it. The xperia play
was a fiasco and the Vita is going to die any day now. There are portable
consoles running android but spec-wise they are all pathetic, and the quality
of some is just subpar. If the ouya was a GBASP with a Tegra3 it would be the
best portable console ever made, and would blow any phone out of the water
when it comes to gaming.

------
drawkbox
Very excited to get mine. It is funny though as I look at OUYA, Steambox, even
GameCube of old and other console cubes appear and can't help that Jobs almost
called it too early with the Mac Cube a bit before it's time and not targeting
the right area of the house yet while GameCube did around the same time
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube> \- probably based on
NeXTCube).

Hopefully the game controller for Apple TV isn't really an April Fool's Joke
as AppleTV is close to being the next big console possibly.

~~~
mcdoh
I think Roku is closer than AppleTV. It has "wiimote" that can be turned
sideways as a gamepad or used as a motion capture remote. Not to mention they
actually let people develop for the platform, they just need to offer
something other than that terrible Basic clone, BrightScript.

------
codezero
The opened up controller looks kind of haggard. The controller in the image
here looks more abused than ny 6 year old XBox 360 controller, hopefully their
production models are more durable than this one looks.

------
novaleaf
fyi, i submitted a game for ouya, and the system is not ready.

1) the dev sdk is not yet complete. Try figuring out how to bring up the in-
game menu, or "pause" using the controller. Seems logical that's what the
middle button should be for, but there isn't any sort of guidance on this in
the api.

2) my game is developed using unity, and runs on android (it's in the google
play store). We get my game building using the official Ouya plugin, but
without dev hardware, our ability to test is extremely limited, but we do our
best to plug in an xbox controller and make sure everythign works. .... so we
submit the game to ouya, and they reject it citing "the game takes turns every
one second after starting, and the music keeps playing after exiting the
game"..... since my game doesn't actually have "turns", and we use Unity as an
engine so don't actually do anything special for exiting, I emailed them back
asking for clarification ... and got no response.

rant: they name the controllers buttons OUYA. wtf seriously? they couldn't use
ABXY?

------
mikec3k
I can't wait to receive my Ouya, as a $99 backer.

------
dannowatts
i didn't back this project, but it's really exciting to see that they have
shipped the ouya, on time. much props to the ouya team and all involved!

------
IheartApplesDix
You can lead a horse to metered water but you can't make him put a quarter in
the booth.

