OUYA - $99 USD Game Console

[Specineff]

I just realized. You know what this is? It's an Android smartphone masquerading as a console.

When this thing inevitably flops (most likely it won't even make it into retailers), I hope it serves as a warning to Nintendo/Sony/MS to keep their new systems distinct from smartphone and tablet platforms. No "apps", no cloud streaming, no BS.

And yet Apple is raking in the money from game sales on their not-dedicated-to-games devices.

[mesh control]

I just realized. You know what this is? It's an Android smartphone masquerading as a console.

OMG I JUST REALIZED IT'S ESTEBANG POSING AS A REGULAR POSTER. HUH.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The first Xbox was pretty much a PC devoid of mouse and keyboard. I believe Quake III is playable online on a modded Xbox.

[Skykid]

I just realized. You know what this is? It's an Android smartphone masquerading as a console.

When this thing inevitably flops (most likely it won't even make it into retailers), I hope it serves as a warning to Nintendo/Sony/MS to keep their new systems distinct from smartphone and tablet platforms. No "apps", no cloud streaming, no BS.

Can't speak for Nintendo, but I'm pretty sure that's what the other boys will be packing.

[BIL]

I just realized. You know what this is? It's an Android smartphone masquerading as a console.

OMG I JUST REALIZED IT'S ESTEBANG POSING AS A REGULAR POSTER. HUH.

[Drachenherz]

Hmm, actually I'm on the fence supporting this kickstarter with 99$ and getting my Ouya when it's published eventually.

The prospect of an open-for-all, relatively cheap-to-develop-for console is quite tempting. Of course, there certainly will be loads of loads of BS-games for it, but I think there will also be quite a few treasures by young, motivated and talented coders.

I mean, think about it, for example, there HAS to be another Yotsubane out there, or other similarly talented people who could use this plaform to get their games out.

Yeah, it really sounds like a very good concept, I think I'll fund it and become an early-adaptor guineapig... *lol*

[Marc]

Can't hurt to have a pop at the price. I'm in, even if it only convinces Minter to port his games. Minotron, on a TV, with a joypad... Hell yeah. There's bound to be the odd out of the blue classic if this really takes off, it's like the Pi but actually for the home.

[Friendly]

I'm getting one. Cheap, dedicated media player, android ports that can be played with a joypad with actual buttons instead of a touchpad? What could possibly be bad about that?
As y'all know by now I'm not a fan of digital distribution, but it's much less of a problem on a non-closed system where you can actually back-up and transfer stuff.

Btw, here's an example of what Tegra 3 can do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBl-goBrWno

[Ghegs]

The prospect of an open-for-all, relatively cheap-to-develop-for console is quite tempting. Of course, there certainly will be loads of loads of BS-games for it, but I think there will also be quite a few treasures by young, motivated and talented coders.

That's what I'm hoping for. Most current gen console releases don't really hold much appeal to me, so having a system where the titles don't have to be aimed at the lowest common denominator (so they can sell the 10+ million copies it takes for them to just make a profit) is certainly an appealing idea. Bring back the bedroom coders, I say. Also, there are some otherwise decent games for the Android that are spoiled only by the controls, so the idea of getting ports of those with proper controls is almost enough to pique my interest alone. Plenty of arcade racers there, for example. And even R-Type.

So, went and pledged $99 + $20 for international shipping.

[shmuppyLove]

This could actually be decent for emulation.

There's now an Android port of MAME 0.139u1, and Snes9x EX Alpha runs very well. I'm sure there are others, never tried the PSX emulator but I heard good things.

I'd be concerned that a lot of games won't properly support the joypad though. The emulators should be fine because the devs realized people would want to use things like the Xperia Play or Wiimote/CCP/iCade controllers, so they support input remapping, but native Android games are going to be primarily for touch-screen devices, so I'm not sure how they're going to manage that.

Probably they'll have a seperate app store just for Ouya titles?

[Friendly]

This could actually be decent for emulation.

There's now an Android port of MAME 0.139u1, and Snes9x EX Alpha runs very well. I'm sure there are others, never tried the PSX emulator but I heard good things.

I'd be concerned that a lot of games won't properly support the joypad though. The emulators should be fine because the devs realized people would want to use things like the Xperia Play or Wiimote/CCP/iCade controllers, so they support input remapping, but native Android games are going to be primarily for touch-screen devices, so I'm not sure how they're going to manage that.

Probably they'll have a seperate app store just for Ouya titles?

Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad

And yeah, they'll have their own store; they get 30% of every sale, 70% goes to the developers. I don't think they'll include Google Play, because then they'd get nothing. Of course you can root OUYA and install Google play separately (Google play takes 10% of each sale; as comparison, Apple also takes 30%). Maybe they should have gone with 25% instead of 30 to be lower than Apple, but 70% for the developers is still a whole lot better than XBLA/PSN/Wiiware.

[Drachenherz]

Ok, I'm officially a backer now, 99 $ and 20 $ for international shipping. I guess I'll forget about the whole thing now... So I can be joyfully surprised in March 13 when I receive notification, that my Ouya has been shipped.

[DJ Incompetent]

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ouya

The Ouya people are taking game requests and will ask developers to get in on this.
Wanna pound it with requests?

I sent this along:
Mushihime-sama Futari Black Label - Cave
Raiden 4 - Moss
Under Defeat HD - G.Rev
Radirgy Noa Massive - Milestone
Duality ZF - Xona Games

[ZellSF]

This could actually be decent for emulation.

There's now an Android port of MAME 0.139u1, and Snes9x EX Alpha runs very well. I'm sure there are others, never tried the PSX emulator but I heard good things.

Emulation on Android has lots of input lag. Snes9x EX is particularly bad and is easily the worst SNES emulator I've ever used.

[Friendly]

They just increased the available number again, this time to 80,000. Maybe they won't let it sell out for the duration of the kickstarter at all, because the higher the install-base will be at launch, the better Ouya's chance of success as a platform will be.

[Drachenherz]

They just increased the available number again, this time to 80,000. Maybe they won't let it sell out for the duration of the kickstarter at all, because the higher the install-base will be at launch, the better Ouya's chance of success as a platform will be.

That makes sense.

I for one hope that the Ouya becomes a huge success. It'd be a nice change in the big screen console market - and actually it wouldn't surprise me if a "newbie console manufacturer" (backed with the experience and hopfully the necessary funds) could make an impact.

I'm cautiously keeping my hopes up for a change in the console market.

[t0yrobo]

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's long term success might rely on making a deal with some tv manufacturers to have the hardware built in as well as a set top box. If google was more serious about pushing gtv Ouya would already be redundant.

[DJ Incompetent]

They just increased the available number again, this time to 80,000. Maybe they won't let it sell out for the duration of the kickstarter at all, because the higher the install-base will be at launch, the better Ouya's chance of success as a platform will be.

Onya totally struck a deal with Foxconn confirmed! *zing*

[Despatche]

for some reason, i'm reminded of the gp2x as a console. that might be the only reason i care about this thing at all, as every other facet of this situation is completely pointless.

Radirgy Noa Massive - Milestone

i think you should have asked for a bigger msc

edit: correct writing is bad for you

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

for some reason, i'm reminded of the gp2x as a console.

And that's not a bad thing at all, provided they use dpads this time that don't break after a couple of months.

Re: the you can also connect your PC to your TV -argument, many people have big towers which they wouldn't want to put next to the living room TV, or they have a dedicated place for their PC on a desk or something, which doesn't really make connecting them to the TV practicable. Also, I don't really want to clutter my main PC with lots of emulators and roms, the OUYA allows you to have one compact gaming station that can play all of them. I'll think about getting one as soon as they improve the emulators for Android to a certain standard.

[Shatterhand]

I am really positive about this.

I've been saying for years that someone should release a proper gaming system with an open development kit. I think Zeebo had the potential to be that system, but they didn't use an open dev kit, and we all saw how that shit turned it out to be.

I am buying this for sure.

[Jonathan Ingram]

I don`t get the hype about this potentially being a great emulation machine. Hardware this weak will never handle something like PCSX2 and Dolphin or even SSF.

[trap15]

I don`t get the hype about this potentially being a great emulation machine. Hardware this weak will never handle something like PCSX2 and Dolphin or even SSF.

And since it's running Android, not even NES will run "well".

[null1024]

I don`t get the hype about this potentially being a great emulation machine. Hardware this weak will never handle something like PCSX2 and Dolphin or even SSF.

And since it's running Android, not even NES will run "well".

This. To get decent emulation on my Android phone, I had to root it and force the CPU to run at it's max clock rate [in my case, 1GHz]. Otherwise, it'll randomly drop frames for no good reason, even when doing something as light as Game Boy Color emulation.
But for doing lighter emulation on the Ouya, say, pre-PS1 [but still including PS1 emulation] would work mostly fine [from those specs, and we weren't given a clock rate].

Also, my 2009 cheapo [$400, on sale from $500] laptop struggles with SSF [chokes a bit with Virtua Fighter 2 and other 480i games, seems to run Virtual On at near full speed], and won't even bother getting a decent framerate in PCSX2 [sub-40 FPS]. I did manage to get Smash Bros working 60 FPS in Dolphin there, but I had the video settings extremely low [I was rendering at 1/4 resolution or something], had to turn off items, and only have 2 characters on screen.
The point is, those emulators actually need quite decent hardware, and getting that at the $99 pricepoint doesn't sound reasonable. And those emulators also have chunks written in X86 assembly for speed purposes.

[louisg]

I guess someone could write an entirely new Genesis emulator for it. I'm sure it's more than fast enough to handle emulating some of those systems given that my 132mhz 486 came pretty close to decent performance in Genecyst and could play certain games in ZSNES fluidly, not to mention great performance in Callus. The sticking point is, yes, those emulators were heavy on the assembly code. I thought though there was an API for Android for native code..?

I'm not sure how well-performing Android is in general. I know the latency for synthesizer applications is in the hundreds of milliseconds, for example.

[Udderdude]

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanFisch ... 11/173901/

[ZellSF]

Did that article really suggest they put an x86 platform with Windows installed it on an ultra-cheap, low-power console? And in the same paragraph state that you can get an Xbox 360 for less than 100$?

[null1024]

Did that article really suggest they put an x86 platform with Windows installed it on an ultra-cheap, low-power console? And in the same paragraph state that you can get an Xbox 360 for less than 100$?

I saw comments that stated exactly that. Didn't see it in the article, but the article was so flatly dismissive that I can't exactly take it seriously, and skimmed a few bits.

Also, I can't see gaming moving from the TV like that article said. I have a screen larger than a handful of inches, I want my games on said screen. Sure, I'll play a few things on a 4 inch screen when I'm on the go. I'll barely fucking touch a damn portable once I'm home with my TV though.

And a couple commenters mentioned "why Android instead of some custom rolled Linux or something", and my answer to that is that there is a ton of dev support for Android, a lot of developers work with the Android APIs and toolset and don't really do much coding under a plain Linux environment, or their middleware has an Android backend but no plain Linux one, etc. Things like that.

There is a bit of a reason to have some sort of negativity to the Ouya though.
My netbook has HDMI out, I'll plug it into my big TV, and I have a little VGA->Composite box, I'll plug that into my CRT. I have too many controllers to use on my PC, and my netbook can probably emulate as much as the Ouya can with those specs.
Although, Ouya wins out on 2 things: game developers targeting Ouya-level hardware [unlike on the PC, where development tends to get focused on far higher end hardware than a netbook], and cost. The Ouya is quarter the cost of an entry level PC.

PS: To be honest, I don't give a damn if this flops as a console, but come on, $99 for an Android set-top box+controller. You could do a lot worse.

[Obiwanshinobi]

In other news, Morph Ball is too small for Samus Aran to turn into it as quickly as the games would lead you to believe.

[trap15]

I guess someone could write an entirely new Genesis emulator for it. I'm sure it's more than fast enough to handle emulating some of those systems given that my 132mhz 486 came pretty close to decent performance in Genecyst and could play certain games in ZSNES fluidly, not to mention great performance in Callus. The sticking point is, yes, those emulators were heavy on the assembly code. I thought though there was an API for Android for native code..?

I'm not sure how well-performing Android is in general. I know the latency for synthesizer applications is in the hundreds of milliseconds, for example.

It doesn't really matter how well that 486 machine could handle it; the overhead in Android is enormous, and the APIs and generally how the OS works and performs makes it completely unsuitable requiring such REAL TIME tasks (hey, RTOS's, this is what YOU WERE MADE FOR, WHY DOES NO ONE USE YOU ).