Ouya - Android based open gaming console

[TrashyMG]

yeah seems like a lame rebuttal.

 

[FRZ]

On the other hand, they are still making news on engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/19/ouya-consoles-first-exclusive-game-is-human-element-prequel-f/

 

[craigix]

I'm not entirely sure how it can be 'exclusive' when they seem to be using Android and off the shelf parts?


Will DRM be involved in this open console then?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

OOH YEAH.Which is cheaper popcorn or an Ouya?

 

[TrashyMG]

So buy an Ouya, rid it of the DRM ridden Android, install cyanogenmod Andoid... profit.


Even better there may be a Tegra 3 development board readily available by the time this comes out.

 

[Exophase]

These responses are hilarious.

OUYA is real. We have a real functional prototype (we show it playing Shadowgun in our video.) It runs on a Tegra3 standard reference board. What is unique with OUYA is not the technology but how we put it together and how we wrap it in a beautifully designed, Yves Behar package.

So basically, they haven't designed hardware and they don't have a REAL prototype, and they're probably underestimating the work necessary to do that (of course nVidia won't sell them reference boards for this, unless they want to do so at one tenth the price!). That they think it's about the.. well, case, and not what's inside it is just staggering.. It's not even a very good case!


This reminds me a lot of the mysterious nD "prototype" that was covered in shadow during video and a lot of us speculated was just an off the shelf eval board as well. At least OUYA admit it.


I stand by my assertion that KS should at least ask for schematics if not drawings and BOMs. It should be about earning money to fund production, not earning money to get people to maybe do the design work to support a vague idea.


Moving on..

OUYA will not have advertisements.

There goes any semblance of a "free to play" hook for your typical Android dev.

We want every game to allow gamers to experience it for free. We also want developers to have the freedom and flexibility to monetize their content the way they want to. On OUYA, games can have in-game purchases, subscriptions, and demos with full game downloads. Developers will make money through our F2P model.

Basically, "we want developers to be able to monetize their game any way they want to.. except charging for all of it." Nitpicking, maybe, but she really should be more careful with her words, because she lets in a lot of contradictions. For instance..

OUYA is built on Android. Any Android game or application could run on it.

What about the ones with ads, which are not going to be on OUYA? What about the ones for which a little trackpad is clearly unsuitable?

We expect all types of games will be on OUYA. We have already had a number of developers reach out to us because of our Kickstarter campaign and want to bring their existing and new content to OUYA. We are even talking with the AAA publishers.

Fortunately for OUYA "talking" doesn't mean that anyone's interested. Rather than constantly say you have lots of games lined up why not give some actual names? Are people that secretive of it? I've seen several would-be consoles come out with this crap before, not just Phantom.. and of course none of them delivered..

One of our important principles is to create a single, standard chipset so that developers only have one OUYA to build for.

This shows just how out of touch they are with their own technology. Apple has done a great job maintaining compatibility over many different pieces of hardware, because things run on an abstracted OS and they can manage the hardware and drivers to ensure that a minimum environment is maintained. Android obviously provides the same thing, and in fact offers little for getting down to the metal of the SoC, it really can't even be done short of rooting it and modifying the OS itself. So why stick with the same hardware, other than out of an antiquated idea that console dev means hardware specific stuff even though it clearly won't here? They're going to be launching with an already aging SoC with none of the benefits of low level access, if they don't commit to upgrading it they're sinking themselves fast.

We’ve seen the articles in which a member of the team behind the Pandora Handheld trashed our project.


He said we couldn’t do it for the price. We can.


He said we’d be making them at a loss. We won’t.


He said we’d charge a subscription. We won’t.


He said there was nothing revolutionary about our revenue share with developers. There isn’t. (In fact, we’ve said it’s pretty standard.)


And remember, this isn't a marketing push this is a Kickstarter campaign. We needed the money from Kickstarter to complete the OUYA product.

.. okay this was already covered, but of course they're going to say that they can do what they already said they can do. Without any further elaboration how this is just meaningless (well, the subscription thing is worth mentioning, but I think Craig was way off the mark in claiming this one). It's good to see them come out and say that this is the only place they're getting money from, hopefully they're being honest. Although if it does tank financially there's a chance someone will rescue it, now that it has received so much attention.

 

[craigix]

Subscription was just a guess I made while talking it over with Pocket Gamer about how they might actually make money assuming the console was really open.


We now know/highly suspect it will have DRM so it's all up in the air, maybe they don't even know themselves how this is going to work.

 

[Prometheus]

We now know/highly suspect it will have DRM so it's all up in the air, maybe they don't even know themselves how this is going to work.

I don't know if this article is relevant to that, but;

Speaking to Eurogamer, Uhrman claimed that Ouya - which has been sold as an open, hackable platform - will be at least as secure as any existing Android device.


"In fact, because all the paid content will require authentication with Ouya's servers, we have an added layer of security," she said. "Hacking and openness are about getting what you want to do with the hardware. Rooting the device won't give you any more access to the software."

That's what they've said about it, it appears.

 

[craigix]

Anyone get the feeling that they are just making this up as they go along?

 

[quartercast]

I think it's a brave concept, producing a mainstream home console based on android and all for $99.


Good luck to them, I hope it works out. I think this shows how far good PR and marketing can take a concept, in today's crowdsourced environment.


Some lessons here for OP methinks

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

@Craig That was macguyvers motto too 'Im just making this up as I go along' But then he was friggin Macguyver.He could make a bungie rope from a condom(a used one at that)

 

[vcoleiro1]

Haters still be hating I see.


Time will will tell I guess in the end.


One thing has occured to me the other day regarding the Tegra 3 chip and Nvidia. Basically, Nvidia are trying to monopolise the mobile market into using there chips like the Tegra 3. They have been pushing the Tegra Zone and Tegra tuned games as a differentiating point for some time. Basically the premise being , hey if you buy a mobile device , make sure it's a Tegra based one as there are lots of epic game titles that are Tegra tuned , and will not work there best unless they are on a Tegra based system. It's very smart of Nvidia.


Why is this important, simple - I couldn't work out at first why Ouya were saying that Nvidia is working closely with them , then it became obvious. Here's a console that will have a Tegra 3 chip and Tegra tuned games developed for it in a new Android with controller segment. Nvidia would be bending over backwards to make this work, wouldn't be surprised if they not only give Ouya massive discounts on the chip but also significant tech guidance.

 

[TrashyMG]

^ I was thinking about this as well.. there does seem to be some big players involved with this project..


But I can't help to be cranky how they're marketing this.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Nahhh.I don't hate the ouya.It's just a bit of fun.Hope it works out for sure but it just being another android device hasn't got me too excited.Id consider taking a punt at 99 dollars but ive got a gcw zero S.E and a 1ghz Pandora coming soon so ive got to keep the wallet closed.

 

[Exophase]

One thing has occured to me the other day regarding the Tegra 3 chip and Nvidia. Basically, Nvidia are trying to monopolise the mobile market into using there chips like the Tegra 3. They have been pushing the Tegra Zone and Tegra tuned games as a differentiating point for some time. Basically the premise being , hey if you buy a mobile device , make sure it's a Tegra based one as there are lots of epic game titles that are Tegra tuned , and will not work there best unless they are on a Tegra based system. It's very smart of Nvidia.

nVidia buys exclusivity (either with support for features or entire games) by paying developers for it or offering to do it themselves. There's nothing special about their hardware. Especially in Tegra's case, where the GPU is actually pretty lackluster compared to other offerings. There really isn't even much in the way of legitimate tuning.. the whole setup is pretty artificial and rather cheap IMO.


That said, nVidia isn't coming anywhere close to taking a huge chunk of the mobile market because they don't have a huge presence in phones. They've got some big design wins in tablets, but even today Apple is grossly dominating there, and it's not like everyone else is sitting still. OMAP5 and Exynos 5 are going to up the ante on nVidia considerably, among others.

Why is this important, simple - I couldn't work out at first why Ouya were saying that Nvidia is working closely with them , then it became obvious. Here's a console that will have a Tegra 3 chip and Tegra tuned games developed for it in a new Android with controller segment. Nvidia would be bending over backwards to make this work, wouldn't be surprised if they not only give Ouya massive discounts on the chip but also significant tech guidance.

If nVIdia has so much stock in OUYA then they should publicly back them. Until then I don't really trust OUYA's claims completely, they like to embellish things here and there. If nVidia REALLY believed in this concept they'd be doing it themselves, which I'm sure would tremendously improve its credibility.


Maybe it'll be like Pandora, where TI was supposed to be giving OPT special deals that AFAIK didn't really materialize..

 

[vcoleiro1]

Time will tell as to how much support Nvidia give Ouya. They are in no doubt trying to create this unique Tegra tuned games scene with there Tegra zone, and Tegra tuned differentiation. So it would stand to reason that they would want Ouya to succeed. MOoe games developed for a Tegra device in a new segment as I said. In fact it will be the only Android and or Tegra gaming console , no matter which way you look at it, Nvidia would want that to come to fruition and succeed

 

[JackTheKnife]

Looks like behind Ouya are Kindle/Amazon ppl.


Now I will have some kind of fun-race: do I will get Pandora (batch1) first or Ouya :lol:


Sent from my Notion Ink ADAM using Tapatalk 2

 

[Exophase]

Time will tell as to how much support Nvidia give Ouya. They are in no doubt trying to create this unique Tegra tuned games scene with there Tegra zone, and Tegra tuned differentiation. So it would stand to reason that they would want Ouya to succeed. MOoe games developed for a Tegra device in a new segment as I said. In fact it will be the only Android and or Tegra gaming console , no matter which way you look at it, Nvidia would want that to come to fruition and succeed

Of course nVidia wants it to succeed. That doesn't mean they have so much faith in it that they're willing to drop a lot of money on it.

 

[vcoleiro1]

No one said they would drop a lot of money on it, they may offer a discount on the chips however and provide some guidance. Just a shrewd business decision to help something which in turn will generate Nvidia more dollars.

 

[Tobs]

We now know/highly suspect it will have DRM so it's all up in the air, maybe they don't even know themselves how this is going to work.

I don't know if this article is relevant to that, but;

Speaking to Eurogamer, Uhrman claimed that Ouya - which has been sold as an open, hackable platform - will be at least as secure as any existing Android device.


"In fact, because all the paid content will require authentication with Ouya's servers, we have an added layer of security," she said. "Hacking and openness are about getting what you want to do with the hardware. Rooting the device won't give you any more access to the software."

That's what they've said about it, it appears.

She said on a podcast interview (can't remember which one, sorry) that rooted devices wouldn't be allowed access to the application store. This implies that the default OS will be fairly restricted, unable to copy game files etc, else what's the purpose of blocking rooted access?