OUYA's Inevitable Decision & Possible Pathways.

[RiotingSpectre]

I was originally going to drunkenly post this to our Mr. James Andrew Coote in private message since we haven't had much to talk about these days and he's always insightful, but I figured a collective of "Always Save" branded members could be just as good so without further ado...

I was thinking about what I believe is OUYA's inevitable predicament due to various factors that surround the company, the market, and the consumer's interest. As we all know, the OUYA console is an alright system in its own right with the majority who actually own it being relatively pleased while the minority still hanging onto the console for such things as XBMC, side-loading, and just for the hell of it. To everybody who owns it there's not much complaining and we deal with the typical fools that bash the console for what seems like an endless amount of shameless reasons that don't have any merit to them. Though with all the positives that comes with the console there's without a doubt some negatives that we can all pretty much wholeheartedly agree on and while I won't go into detail as to what they are, I just want to say that nothing is perfect. What I want to touch on first is such an example that while isn't the console itself; it's a huge detractor that doesn't embellish the console more often than not.

To start, the company behind the console has been ridiculed by many including us for the most part. This is due to their amateurish approaches to things like marketing themselves or the games that aren't Towerfall and Amazing Frog along with somehow making decisions that cause problems that shouldn't have happened in the first place like the FreeTheGame debacle which could have been avoided by sitting down with more than one person for five minutes and staring at each other. The point is, is that the company has a very bad habit of not thinking things out and I think they're going to come across a problem once again which is the cause of this and it relates to the next iteration of OUYA possibly called OUYA Two. We all know that OUYA Inc. plans to release a console each year for whatever reason and 2014 is now so we're quite possibly going to have a new toy to play with. I however don't think this is necessarily a good idea to go along with.

It may not be an exact year apart between iterations but I firmly believe that releasing another console in any time-frame near that would pull a market fragmentation for OUYA. SEGA had released both the SEGA CD and SEGA 32X while announcing the Sega Saturn shortly after and that severely hurt the consumer's and developer's loyalty towards them along with their brand getting severely stripped as something you'd want in your household. The original console is still on-going and is still gaining momentum like the original Genesis was and has more titles coming out in the future with what being listed in the spoiler below is my personal list of things I'm waiting to play. You can probably guess that I'm against a successor so soon to the original's release, but that's just my opinion as someone who has seen some things and can only speculate what might be a bad route to follow *Insert Vietnam Styled Flashback Here*. There's however a flaw to anything anyone can come up with and that's the public reception that can be overly critical for seemingly miniscule things...

What I mean is that the OUYA as of now is considered an archaic hardware ridden cube with nothing but phone ports and is followed by a group of people who are blinded by ignorance. People bash it as something you shouldn't waste your time on as this dated hardware can be experienced on anything technologically superior like an XboxONE, or PS4. While technically that's true; OUYA's unique approach when it comes to what developers they're adhere to and in what way offsets this which allows us to get experiences that can only be found on the console. The point is, is that the public as a whole(it seems) doesn't care about anything other than revolutionary hardware with software taking a huge backseat. What's OUYA Inc. supposed to do?

The Tegra K1(five) chip has been said to be an affordable option for tablets that allow people to run the latest software at small price. While the discussion as to whether OUYA Two should have a Tegra four or Tegra five has been done to death. I think all previous conversations have overlooked the simple fact that OUYA Inc. doesn't necessarily have to release a new hardware every year which could lead to an overly expensive OUYA Two due to the Tegra K1 be a relatively new chip. Why does this need to happen and while the one-hundred dollar price point has been a good benefactor to the current console, why do we have to keep the price consistent? The new sixteen gigabyte OUYA models tells me they're not aiming to do just that.

My idea is to wait longer than they originally anticipated to release the next OUYA Two so they can go ahead and get the Tegra K1 at a reasonable deal while retailing at a reasonable price. It has nothing to do with getting the best graphics in the world, but to remove a lot of that negative public perception that surrounds us and thus would garner more customers and developer support. Wait and spend money to make more money essentially. Part of the reason why I think this is the correct course of action is that we're just not ready as a community and as a consumer base for another iteration in the form of a new console. They're doing the right thing by making the current model more attractive by adding face-plates, bigger internal storage models, and fixing all the hiccups that plagued us.

To sum it up from a positive standpoint, I think we(as in all of us) should continue supporting the platform we have at the moment while waiting for technology itself to naturally go its course so that we can have a better opportunity this time around to become "something" of worth to those who see us as people with toys. We would gain public support in the form of positive press which would in itself increase developer support which in the end would increase the user-base and overall quality of the console. In my opinion we stand to lose nothing by simply waiting and skipping Tegra four as the Tegra three we have now isn't even maxed out yet so it's not like anybody can cry about not being able to develop for it unless extreme conditions are met.

To sum it up from a negative standpoint, I think if we don't get the foot we already have in the door to turn into some featureless humanoid walking into your house and eating your cookies this time around, then we might be in a bit of trouble. This is just my opinion on what the company and everybody who supports the OUYA brand should do which is to stay the course and think strategically. I could have gone into more detail about everything but I'm not in the best quality mindset at the moment hence the first sentence, but the sole fact remains. While the first time around has been going simply "alright". If we screw this second iteration up and I we're finished.

What do you think?

[Killswitch]

Killswitch agrees but you could probably tell that from previous posts. I just didn't want to take the time out to type it all out like you did so thanks for doing it for me

No need to rush it out now, continue the course, keep building a fanbase, keep making improvements, then release. It could even be pushed back to holiday season with no one doing anything this year except maybe a big game or two.

[Grimbarian]

The whole Sega (UK based here so different naming) MegaDrive, Mega CD, 32X, Sega Saturn thing was the last straw for me. I had followed Sega blindly and never owned a Nintendo system. When the system I followed dropped that money grabbing bombshell on me, I sold it immediately and bought the next console that wasn't a Nintendo (PS1).

In my opinion (even though we've known about it for a while now) the OUYA Two is not welcome yet. It causes developers to hold off releasing games in case they already look dated on hardware that could potentially handle more, and stops gamers from committing to a system for fear of it being a doorstop in 3 months time (although Apple seem to manage this quite nicely).

I haven't even thought about what to develop for an OUYA Two - as an indie developer my resources are limited and can only really focus on one thing at a time...

[knave]

I think that was a well written and articulate expression of how many of us feel in the OUYA community. I don't need bigger, better, Faster. I need Stable, Storage, and Working controllers.

My opinion is that the game marketplace is coming along. More Devs are coming out of the woodwork and there are more and more fun games to suit a variety of tastes coming out each week.

The "Hot" aspect of OUYA so far is couch multiplayer. It is a refreshing and novel experience to introduce ones hardcore gaming friends to a tiny $99 cube and beat the snot out of them for hours with a $5 game...while everyone involved has a blast. More Please.

Thank you for sharing RiotingSpectre

[Jayenkai]

If you play the Android edition of BlastTrax on various Android devices, the fragmentation of Android becomes rapidly apparent. Some devices cope well with the "screen feedback" based blur effect. Others completely break it..
As far as I'm concerned, as long as any future OUYAs ensure that my effect isn't broken, then pretty much all my games created for OUYA1 should work happily on them.
That, and the hope that they stick with the current controller configuration, and not inexplicably break that, too.

Stick with what we've got, and improve without breaking.
We'll be fine!!

[timmytot666]

doesn't matter to me personally. Ill be grabbing an ouya 2 as soon as someone plays gamecube games on it. Now whether or not I buy the ouya 2.0 is completely dependant on that. So if it doesn't work then I won't get it; even if it comes out in 3 years. But if they released an ouya 2 tomorrow and it played those games id buy it immediately.

all this "fracturing" you guys are talking about confuses me as long as your game continues to work for both ouyas who cares which machine is faster? Almost all our devs have the original ouya whose to say they are going to overstep their resources so the first iteration no longer works?

As far as anything I've made goes they work on multiple hardware configurations but I've never made a game. But if towerfall can be ported to playstation 4 then I see no reason why we have to make games that won't work on the ouya 1.

Sent from my LGL55C using Tapatalk 2

[Jon_TWR]

If you play the Android edition of BlastTrax on various Android devices, the fragmentation of Android becomes rapidly apparent. Some devices cope well with the "screen feedback" based blur effect. Others completely break it..
As far as I'm concerned, as long as any future OUYAs ensure that my effect isn't broken, then pretty much all my games created for OUYA1 should work happily on them.
That, and the hope that they stick with the current controller configuration, and not inexplicably break that, too.

Stick with what we've got, and improve without breaking.
We'll be fine!!

+1! I'd buy an OUYA 2.

[gopackersjt]

What really bugs me about Ouya haters is the fact that they think because the Ouya runs Android, it plays phone games. It runs Android because it's easy/cheap to develop for, and it's open source meaning it's free to build on. It also drives me crazy when people compare the Tegra 3 in it to tablets and phones. We have no power constraints, meaning it's actually better than the typical Tegra 3. Plus, mainstream console gamers are such hypocrites talking about hardware. The Xbox 360 and PS3's hardware was from 2004.... not like they had the latest and greatest hardware either... As for a T4 vs. a K1, I feel that the K1 would make for an excellent marketing strategy, claiming the Ouya $150 console can play Unreal Engine 4 games just like the $400 PS4 and the $500 Xbox One.

[Nitrogen_Widget]

What really bugs me about Ouya haters is the fact that they think because the Ouya runs Android, it plays phone games. It runs Android because it's easy/cheap to develop for, and it's open source meaning it's free to build on. It also drives me crazy when people compare the Tegra 3 in it to tablets and phones. We have no power constraints, meaning it's actually better than the typical Tegra 3. Plus, mainstream console gamers are such hypocrites talking about hardware. The Xbox 360 and PS3's hardware was from 2004.... not like they had the latest and greatest hardware either... As for a T4 vs. a K1, I feel that the K1 would make for an excellent marketing strategy, claiming the Ouya $150 console can play Unreal Engine 4 games just like the $400 PS4 and the $500 Xbox One.

I go back and forth with this & i'd be good with waiting for a K1 based Ouya.

They really have no competition right now and the only reason for a faster one is for game cube & other more demanding emulators.

also, the hater's out there....well they don't really seem to know what their talking about because they make their baseless claims the follow up with the equivalent of bro-science on a health & nutrition forum.
So whatever.

[rosse119]

Keep the Ouya for time being then release the next one towards Christmas, the Ouya is building more fans now and I think two Ouyas at the same time will cause problems, existing Ouya owners like me will have to buy another one because we won't be able to play some newer titles, I don't want to do that every year.