Kind of odd that is touts 4k which I and many others don't have or need yet but doesn't have wireless AC which I do use and would likely be needed to stream that 4k content.
Kind of odd that is touts 4k which I and many others don't have or need yet but doesn't have wireless AC which I do use and would likely be needed to stream that 4k content.
What I don't like about OUYA Everywhere is that I'm concerned that it would turn Discover into a secondary feature instead of a primary one, since people would already have other things as primary features there would be less demand to make them secondary features within Discover itself, OUYA iterating slower and stuck with outdated hardware to more easily go everywhere, a lower demand for the console itself and it becoming just a dev kit, and more misconceptions about what the OUYA is.
But to play devil's advocate for smart TVs, wouldn't it essentially be spam/a TV commercial for the console that you could try out? For an example, lets say only 1% of the people that have OUYA on their smart TVs become fans out of 1 million people. That would be 10,000 new fans. About 1 to 2 1/2 years after they have been playing it on their smart TVs it starts to feel dated. They are fans so they discover the OUYA itself during that time. They hear about the new OUYA 3.0 that is about to come out. They think,"I'm not about to buy a new TV but I have been interested in the OUYA 2.0 games and I'll also get to play the new OUYA 3.0 games. I think on launch day I will buy an OUYA 3.0 to plug into my outdated OUYA 1.0 smart TV. That would add new life to this TV because I'm not about to buy another."
Something like that may happen because it is one of the OUYA Everywheres that upgrading to the console would be smarter than upgrading the device you found OUYA on. There still may be a chance that they would just upgrade their phone/tablet instead but maybe there would be things about doing that which may be another spammy commercial that isn't as smart of an upgrade as buying an OUYA? Since they are fans maybe they want OUYA 3.0 on launch instead of waiting for it to be ported to a phone/tablet? Maybe they have a brand loyalty to a phone/tablet company that isn't an OUYA Everywhere partner? Maybe they aren't ready to upgrade their phone/tablet yet to get OUYA 3.0 because it would be at a price that they might as well upgrade their TV? Because of backwards compatibility there may be a lot of OUYA 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 games they are interested in, the phone/tablet may not have adequate storage space for all of them and it would be better to buy an OUYA 3.0 to use with their external hard drive, maybe they don't want to hook up their phone/tablet to their TV every time they want to play a game and rather have a dedicated game console permanently hooked up, etc.?
In other words, maybe there would be scenarios where upgrading from OUYA Everywhere to an actual OUYA would be the better choice especially when getting the next iteration of OUYA games is the primary reason for looking for a new OUYA capable device? If I had an OUYA 1.0 TV and OUYA 2.0 phone/tablet but no reason to upgrade either of those devices to OUYA 3.0 but still wanted OUYA 3.0 then would I pay $150 or less for an actual OUYA 3.0? Yes. One of the points of OUYA is to make gaming cheaper and to have the same conveniences that console gaming provides like not trying to figure out what is the best hardware option. There is no way I would upgrade my TV, phone/tablet, PC or whatever just to play OUYA 3.0 games. That would be an expensive pain in the ass. If I were to upgrade my TV then not just any OUYA 3.0 TV would do. I would have to find an OUYA 3.0 capable TV that also has all the features that I want out of the TV. Finding both in one TV and still thinking,"What do I do when OUYA 4.0 comes out?" would be an expensive pain in the ass. I don't have a smart phone/tablet but I assume it would be the same thing. If It goes to PC? Another expensive pain in the ass. I've had this laptop since I think 2008. When I eventually go shopping for a new one I'm not going to try to figure out the best laptop to keep for years with features I'm interested in then try to figure out how to fit OUYA into that and which one to get that would be future proof to run future OUYA iterations. That is just an expensive pain in the ass. Just sell me a cheap dedicated new kind of open gaming console. Please!
Anyway, Nuvola NP-1. I had to look it up. It seems to have a lot of gaming options including PC games and definitely ,at least at first glance, looks like more of an "OUYA killer" than anything else I've seen but now obviously won't be one with this partnership. But $299 and 4k UltraHD? What demographic of videophiles who want to be earlier adopters of 4k UltraHD with the money to do so are also people who are not picky with graphics? The kind of person that would already want a 4k UltraHD TV would seem like the kind of person that would buy a Steam Box because XBOX ONE looks too Atari like. I want to meet these people who want to play OUYA on a 4k UltraHD TV. Not just because I'm curious about the existence of these people but because it would be neat to find someone who REALLY likes things to look good while simultaneously can see past that and acknowledges that gameplay is more important than graphics. A person like that would be an excellent OUYA commercial,"I bought a 4k UltraHD TV because I want my movies to look as realistic as possible but I play OUYA on it because I want my games to be fun. I'm a videophile but Amazing Frog is just too amazing for me to pass up over something like graphics."
So i'm guessing Ouya is trying to distribute their playstore ala Google Play to box-tops in addition to pursuing Ouya 2 in the future?
I get it, but I dunno if Ouya has enough exposure/name-recognition to do this consistently.
You brought up almost all of my concerns in there. Google Play will always be the primary if it's present and then maybe some others. Ouya Everywhere is going to take a backseat to the other stores until there is the content to make something like this feasible and who knows if there ever will be when we have to start campaigns to ask people to port a game Ouya.
This little box is a beast. If Ouya 2 comes out with lower specs than some of the other boxes then what is stopping people from buying something else? In that case, the unit is only a positive for developers and not consumers.
TVs. Just don't think it's a good idea because apps are an afterthought, if they had a bigger profile than maybe.
You have a possible AndroidTV, Samsung S Console, maybe a new AppleTV. So the marketplace is going to get cloudy, if you're going to go EVERYWHERE then it might be better to be on branded units like an Ouya tablet not something else where Ouya takes a backseat which will be just about everywhere.
For example, the JXD 7800 though it runs on a Rockchip and also Allwinner versions available but this is what I wouldn't have flinched at, if they had it on one of these. Here's a vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7pNJSpaDog#t=27
The way it SEEMS to be structured now seems like it'll be on EVERYTHING as soon as someone cracks it.
There are actually a lot of niche Android devices that don't have Google Play at all, or that have it and it turns out to kida suck for that device (hi MOJO!). Set-top boxes of any sort are a prime example. I think that initially we'll see OE turn up more often on devices where Play is not a strong feature than on devices where it's the star of the show.
The problem is if Google Play is available, it's still the primary game source. Unless some bigger better content is available on Ouya and not everywhere else but the problem for developers in that case is they'd like to feed themselves and/or family or feed their Mountain Dew addiciton, so until Ouya becomes bigger, it's hard to stay Ouya only.
Timmy just posted another box in the general sections that's a T4 with 4k and costs $105. Has Google Play of course but it's in the price range where it's cost effective unlike MOJO, SHIELD and this beast.
This is good news for the Ouya. As it is the Ouya has the largest portfolio of Android game-controller games. It wouldn't surprise me if Nvidia's Shield 2 doesn't include Ouya games as well. It would be a huge shot in the arm for a game system that is lacking in the game department.
I think what's misunderstood is that OUYA is a platform. Always has been. Yes.. the Kickstarter pushed it as a "new kind of console", but all consoles are inherently platforms. Emulation (a popular use of OUYA) has proven that consoles are platforms that don't have to exist as individual devices to be functional. Except, instead of some forced underground approach to emulation, OUYA is directly supporting it on compatible hardware they didn't design. It's akin to a fantasy situation where Microsoft announces an official X-Box One emulation mode on certain compatible Windows 8 devices. It doesn't diminish the quality of the platform or the official device. It just widens the market to overlap to some PC users. X-Box devs would always need to design for the unit to make sure the main use case is the best experience.
But back to the OUYA.. it has always run off of commodity, off the shelf parts, and that was always their strategy. Before the official devices were released, devs were basically instructed to make games for the Nexus 7, which would be more or less the same experience with a little modification. There's nothing in it, other than the software and specifications to build software on, that's special about it that separates it from other devices out there.
Going forward, OUYA is going to be more of a specification than a proprietary device. Since that's basically what it's always been. And that's not a bad thing.
But that platform specification will be realized into a dev unit that's accessible to everyone to keep price under control. So there will always be an OUYA branded device. Other than controlling price, it's critical for one to exist as a reference unit to control fragmentation. But in terms of the general end-user market, it's not critical or even that important that every single OUYA customer owns an official OUYA device. And in fact, if the user already has an OUYA Everywhere compatible device, it's consumer friendly to not require that user to shell out another $100 to play OUYA games by forcing them to buy a device. I know some feel they're no longer part of some special club by the device hardware itself becoming less important than the platform, but this approach is a lot more accessible or "open" (to again use that over-used term). It plays into the strategy.
What OUYA is doing is trying to develop a affordable TV-Gaming standard. Like a Blu-ray or DVD kind of thing for games with an evolving specification. Steam seems like they're aiming to do the same thing, but for the high end expensive market, and they're not taking the issue of fragmentation nearly as seriously as OUYA is by having some sort of referential standard. So in essence, Valve seems less interested in creating any sort of standard console experience more than creating a slightly dumbed-down PC-gaming rig that focuses on getting people into Steam rather than Window's app store (which, as I recall, was Newel's main motivation for the Linux/Steambox initiative).
And that's alright too, other than not solving the specification interpretation problems that plague most main stream consumers and is still a barrier of entry into PC gaming for a fair amount of consumers.
But what it most importantly boils down to is ... Having OUYA on compatible devices gets OUYA wider adoption nearly for free (in fact, better than free. Odds are OUYA is making something off the licensing).
Adoption is by far the biggest problem with OUYA at the moment. All of the other issues people bring up are merely symptoms of this problem. But if OUYA gets wide adoption, it will move toward solving the sales problems, which will solve the developer attraction problem, which will software quality problems, which will solve the perception problems. As a side effect, the OUYA Everywhere device manufacturers will surely promote the OUYA capability, which gains a positive visibility (something that's also been a struggle).
It also puts some of the burden of hardware manufacturing on other companies. It also opens up the possibility of partnerships with hardware OEMS that may do a better job than OUYA at managing that process. Hardware is really difficult to make money on when you're a small company with many avenues of product development. As OUYA and many of it's customers discovered, physical goods are always subject to quality control problems. And they're amplified if you're smaller, inexperienced and "less influential" (for lack of a better term). This opens the door to better official OUYA devices in the future, even if OUYA is not involved beyond defining the specs and slapping their label on it.