The Ouya Is Basically Dead

Suits moved in and tried to make it something they understood. Game console, app store. Media devices are just getting theirstride
 
jpm100 said:
Suits moved in and tried to make it something they understood. Game console, app store. Media devices are just getting theirstride
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What suits? This was nothing more than a KS money grab from the beginning.
 
gersson said:
I never understood the people who thought this was bad just because it didn't have Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, or Sony tacked on the front. I guess advertising does work...
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Clearly you've paid absolutely no attention to any thread discussing the ouya, otherwise you'd have realized such a statement is completely absurd.

No one thought it was bad because it wasn't made by Sega, MS, Nintendo, Sony, etc.

Everyone thought it was bad due to being an underpowered, under-featured, overpriced, cheaply made system with an unnecessarily locked down app store all for the sake of running cellphone games on your 50" living room tv.

Everyone who has continued to use the thing either uses it to run an emulator, or put xbmc on it(which while simple enough to do, is still far more complicated than the average consumer is willing to put up with), which isn't even what the ouya was marketed as.

Then there's the massive mis-management... pissing off the fanbase that had ordered based on hype alone by having systems available for retail purchase before backers got theirs. Having hokey game development backing money contests that got scammed. Quickly announcing a new version after launch making the product on the shelf obsolete when it had only been out 6 months(did they ever go through with that ouya 2.0 or whatever they called it?).

But sure, yeah, the community obviously dislikes it because it doesn't have a big company name on it :rolleyes:
 
I have one and use it for emulators. I have enough Android tablets to do my game development on. It is tiny and keeps clutter from under the TV. Kids like it.
 
gersson said:
I never understood the people who thought this was bad just because it didn't have Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, or Sony tacked on the front. I guess advertising does work...
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You probably never used one if you still think it's that.

Every step they took was half-baked. All of these are off the top of my head.

1. Putting systems in stores before taking care of the original backers.
2. Crappy controllers. Even making it 'bring your own controller' would have been better than sticking with the original.
3. Not having a universal way to pay for games.
4. Only focusing on indie game support. Sure there's smash potential but you can't build a business waiting for that.

After a while, you cant make rookie mistakes. If it still was just a online project maybe it could be forgiven but the minute they started selling in stores they needed to have everything polished and 100%
 
I agree with the others, if this was a decently powered Android box with the Play store, controller support, and XBMC install able from the Play store, it would have done a lot better. It seemed awesome to me (especially if you could easily take it with you to hotels on trips, etc being really portable).

But XBMC support seemed to be all in the unofficial-hack it variety and it didn't have all the needed hardware acceleration (last I bothered to look into it). And ditto for Play store support.

I would pick one up for emulation and XBMC, but I've already got a spare-parts HTPC with Hyperspin and XBMC I built a couple of years ago. And honestly if I was going to spend $100 for media and emulation, I'd probably just spend $200 on a SFF prebuilt PC to do it.
 
I dont think the idea of playing Android games on your TV is so terrible, as was the pricing. Nobody is going to spend $100 on a console to play a game they wont even spend 99 cents for in the market. Cellphones are multi-purpose devices that serve a huge function in allowing us to communicate anywhere. That alone earns their value at $600 a pop. Being able to play games is just icing on the cake. You cant build a system around icing alone.
 
gersson said:
I never understood the people who thought this was bad just because it didn't have Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, or Sony tacked on the front. I guess advertising does work...
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Dude it was basically a screenless smartphone with a bluetooth joypad. It was very, very evident that by the time they were not going to be able to hit delivery with any guts that weren't out of date at least a little, and that mobile platforms were going to get more wireless interface devices, not less. Apple was caving on keyboards, and there was no way anyone was going to be more strict than apple. That was up front.

During development, it was clear that that gap in current gamey android guts was going to be wider and that the play ecosystem was not jumping on the tablet bandwagen very well, much less the landscape oriented tablet wagon, and they'd be showing up to a slew of controller competition in the android segment.

On top of that, if they had make something that was a decent dollar value of fun, it was going to be five seconds before a MUCH bigger hardware vendor came along and stomped them into a mudhole and took their market 100%.

Lets say they were popular and making money. Competitive intrusion was going ot rear its ugly head. Anyone like amazon, or google could contract out to a 3rd party for the hardware, and have an android for TV section of software in their much better supported store in a matter of days most likely. Failing that, someone like nintendo could decide to open their own and leverage first party titles form themselves.

Even if they could break even producing an open platform, some chinese manufacturer would have showed up and offered something that did the same thing for $5 less and they'd be screwed.

It was DOOMED no matter how you sliced the pie. This was clear from moment one.
 
What I can't figure out is why on earth people give money to kickstarter deals like this. If you invest in a startup with no promise of return you're a fucking tool.
 
teh_chem said:
What suits? This was nothing more than a KS money grab from the beginning.
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Like many KS projects, they took on additional private investors ("The Suits") and the KS investors became just pre-order people and treated as suched. Interesting to know if the suits siphoned offf some of the KS money in the process.
 
I considered one for emulation. My group plays a lot of N64 still and we're starting to go back to Genesis and SNES. Ouya was and may still be one of the cheapest/easiest solutions for this purpose.
 
Ofcourse it's DOA. They never developed is as a publishing platform. All consoles are loss leader publishing platforms.
 
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