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OUYA: A $99 Android console meant to open up console gaming


Arcana
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  • 2 months later...

C'mon now, these kinds of figures mean nothing without context. What's the percentage of people who have paid for an app among mobile phone users in general, after owning one for barely a month?

Also, from their previous article they linked:

The common refrain we're hearing over and over from developers is that their Ouya ports aren't making a lot of money, but they're also dead-easy to create, representing just a couple days work from a single engineer, as long as the game was controller-friendly to begin with.

That's who wants to develop for the system. Who knows if it's enough to sustain the console (probably not), but it's not "nobody" like you say, and it's what people have been saying in this thread all along.

Also notice they said "Ouya ports aren't making a lot of money." Towerfall is the first exclusive that's actually worth playing, and it's doing quite well.

Edited by Dhsu
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Who wants to develop for a system that a) nobody has and B) nobody even buys games on? Oh right. nobody. Looks like business logic won this round.

System is brand new, but there were a lots of units sold at the Kickstarter, the launch, and they will continue to sell units over time to so installed base will obviously increase. People "have" the machine, it just isn't a gigantic figure. (Nor was it ever expected to be, it was always an uphill climb)

Also, at least 27% of the people bought games on it, so that is higher than %0. Not sure where your "nobody buys games" figure came from. That is a pretty high figure considering it is heavily advertised as "Free 2 Play" machine and everybody said people would "Only buy it for an emu/media box" .

So yeah, nobody expected it to be a gigantic success over night. Not sure why the negativity still, seems the system is doing rather well for itself for such an ambitious project. Can't wait to see what its future has in store!

"Who wants to make games for the Ouya?" You say? Anybody big or especially small that wants to. That is kinda the systems whole point :)

Edited by Crowbar Man
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"Who wants to make games for the Ouya?" You say? Anybody big or especially small that wants to. That is kinda the systems whole point :)

I think you may have missed what he was questioning; the problem is that the market share for people who are shown to be willing to purchase games for the OUYA is far, far smaller than would be required to make it worth their time, especially if the game would be platform-exclusive.

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Any sort of monetary compensation at all would be "worth their time" for a smaller indie. Smaller indies make games on almost no budget, and spreading it to any platform is generally "worth the time". Especially since a port to/from Android on Ouya takes almost no effort. Doesn't have to be "exclusive" per se. You guys act as if Indies would turn down a platform to spread on.

Though, Ouya is doing a good job of trying to lure at least timed exclusive games to Ouya:

Currently they will double your kickstarter campaign (up to $250,000) if you kickstart a game and make it Ouya timed exclusive (6 mo minimum I believe), if you have at least reached a $50,000 in funding (and you reach goal)

So currently anybody interested in DOUBLING their kickstarter fund might be interested. Sounds interesting at least!

Edited by Crowbar Man
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The developers specifically listed in that article aren't interested. That doesn't mean ALL developers aren't interested

I'm not sure if going this route is the most effective way to get Good games per se on the system, but we'll see I guess if anybody bites and a couple good ones get on. If we don't oh well, it was worth a shot I guess?

Even if their game winds up not doing like SUPER spectacular on the Ouya, they can also move on to other platforms (including super easy port to Android) just as easy later. At the very least their Kickstarter got doubled!

There is some work to be had on the Ouya, the controller wasn't perfect, the system is a little buggy (which is odd since its just sitting on top of Android). But you can get a PS3 controller to work with it and theres always room for improvements. It certainly is laying an interesting framework for the future going forward (including hardware increments which will improve things, so maybe next model will have far less issues. Hopefully a better controller in the works in the future too)

Overall its nice to see they've gotten this far, even if there has been some stumbling blocks.

I think people are expecting too much for a $99 little box meant for indies (especially in its first year!)

Edited by Crowbar Man
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  • 1 month later...

so just to sew this all up into a nice little bow of 'ouya is a total failure'

Pretty much every game that has qualified for the 'Free the Games' campaign have been clear ripoffs, and every other developer ever thinks it's a terrible campaign. On top of the fact that Ouya refuses to admit there's anything wrong with their 'awesome plan.'

She even has the gall to be like 'we're shocked at the negative feedback!!!!' Outside of inspirational talking, she clearly doesn't know what she's doing.

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It is unfortunate the only people who have been able to actually enter / win the Free the Games thing are scam artists.

This is why we can't have nice things :/

It does seem like this is a bad idea at this point and they should try another strategy. Now they've upset a few of the devs that wanted to make stuff on the Ouya and that really isn't any good.

Also, the impending indie support of PS4, XBO, and the Vita TV could spell turmoil for the little box that could.

I still have hope for Ouya. Still a great idea and a fun experiment. Its still early in the game, but they need to make positive moves, not more bad ones :/

Edited by Crowbar Man
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Oy...

I don't have much hope left for the future of the company, but I'm still glad I got the console itself. I've enjoyed my time with it, and if nothing else it'll someday be one of those consoles that'll be cool to own ironically like an N-gage or Game.com.

It will never be cool ironically to own an N-gage. Ouya, sure. Andy and I talked briefly about it last night, and while we disagree about the games for the console, I am glad that he enjoys it.

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yeah i have no issue with people enjoying ouya

my issue has been and will always be that ouya is a bad business design informed by misguided ideals, and that the people making it and the didn't understand what they were getting into when they made a 'truly open system' where there was absolutely zero filter between absolute trash and a well designed game

it's the same argument people used against wii where people complained about shovelware, except instead of shovelware being i dunno, 40% of games, it's *a significant majority*

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To be honest, I've been more and more disappointed by the company's decisions since the release of the console. I think they've got a great concept, but they aren't exploring that concept correctly. They clearly don't mind at all what the games are about, they just want MOAR GAMES, which is quite stupid in my opinion.

I still hope that they get their shit together, and I'll be releasing the full version of my game on OUYA anyway (it's already finished, so why not), but if they don't start making better decisions soon, they'll definitely be losing yet another OUYA dev. x__x

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It will never be cool ironically to own an N-gage. Ouya, sure. Andy and I talked briefly about it last night, and while we disagree about the games for the console, I am glad that he enjoys it.

Conceptually it has the tech and the tools to be worthwhile for devs. Built-in wifi and ethernet, HDMI, USB w/ mass storage capacity, emulation, great store, and the ability to use PS3 + 360 controllers (!). The last point alone is pretty awesome.

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Conceptually it has the tech and the tools to be worthwhile for devs. Built-in wifi and ethernet, HDMI, USB w/ mass storage capacity, emulation, great store, and the ability to use PS3 + 360 controllers (!). The last point alone is pretty awesome.

yeah, as far as stats go, it's pretty sweet, no argument there. What devs need is a userbase to buy their games.

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where there was absolutely zero filter between absolute trash and a well designed game

No console has had this "filter" except maybe the NES, and even with Nintendo's "filter", some pretty bad NES games got made regardless.

Garbage comes out for every console, ever. I don't get where you think there is some magic filter that keeps out bad games. The only thing that keeps indies off consoles traditionally has been an extremely high barrier of entry. Those who have cash and/or publisher agreements can make all the trashy horrible games they want.

Also iOS/Android/PC are "unfiltered" as the come, and while yes, not everything ever created is golden, great games are made on those platforms.

All that aside, the real danger to Ouya right now is the barrier of entry to next gen platforms has been lowered quite a bit. You could even say possibly because of any perceived threat coming FROM the microconsole race (Ouya, GameStick, if Apple/Google decided to up their game, etc). Sony themselves could enter this tiny race with Vita TV if they release it worldwide (which they probably are)

Edited by Crowbar Man
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Well my point being that just because someone / studio can't afford a publisher agreement and millions of dollars doesn't mean they can't make a fantastic game. Vice versa, just because they can do all that, doesn't mean the games will be good.

That isn't a "filter for well designed games" by any stretch of imagination. As long as you have the resources to get your game on a platform, it can be as bad as possible :/

Those shovelware games for Wii mentioned by Derrit... Perfect example actually, so no idea why he mentioned the Wii. Wii had the standard "You have to buy Devkit, you have to have publisher, you have to pay X tons of money" etc

Edited by Crowbar Man
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