Reflections On Microconsoles

[discotechjam]

I wouldn't say anybody set out to trash Ouya out of Spite - The Ouya was a worse product than today at launch - but The Verge took everything out of proportion and damned it to hell. I bet The Verge were a key factor in the souring of Ouya's rep.

The problem is that the Verge Review (a 3.5 out of 10, half of what its customer rating on Amazon is) wasn't even a review of Ouya at Launch. It was a review of a kickstarter ouya, an unfinished product that was never intended to be for retail. The article was released three months before the launch and in many ways set the tone for every critique of the ouya that followed. In retrospect, its obvious what was happening. One of the Verge's main complaints about the ouya was that it didn't have enough good games. Looking back, that's not a suprisisng problem given that they never played or didn't bother to mention the most successful launch title on the ouya! I think that the Verge review was patient zero for the persistent "Ouya doesn't have any good games" virus that has spread across the internet. Most of their other complaints deal with software, which is a crock because again, it wasn't even a finished product at the time. People spent a lot of time complaining about a perceived lack of integrity within gaming journalism, why is no one talking about this?

For me, I love what OUYA means/meant. It was the idea of going against the establishment, of bringing indies, hobbyists and pros alike, to the TV.
But it just seemed that it was "cool" to slam the OUYA. No one seemed to want to lean on it's positives, but gloss over in favour of yet another (to paraphrase discotechjam) "fall in line" article denouncing it as a failure. Yes, it has problems. Perhaps many of them could have been solved early. But it's what it could be that still has me hooked.

It wasn't just "cool." i think for a lot of these big tech sites its practically mandatory. If you want to keep getting access to the big companies, you avoid praising their competition and you take it easy on the failures of tripple AAA companies. What always kept my interest up was the response coming from independent tech reviews on youtube which for the most part weren't overwhelmingly negative, and at least bothered to put the ouya in the proper context.

[Victor Coleiro]

Ouya did fire back after the initial reviews on the prototype. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/418...ady-for-review

But damage was certainly done. Demage was certainly also done by the controller issues and exchange, controller latency, external storage delays etc. But I doubt that brought it down, it was an ongoing systematic failure to properly put out fires and at the same time creating fires (free the games fund) that contributed - all the while not properly communicating what was going on . But in the end , I don't think they had enough cash to properly market the thing or put into game development - and we saw what the consequences of that.

Still recoverable in my book. But it will take something special , I would love to see them get an injection of cash so they can stop nickel and diming things and properly have a go at this.

[Outlander999]

I liked the article, seems realistic.

I got OUYA with a preorder made in jan 2013. They sent it to me in july, an OUYA kickstarter version with the marks of the backers, and I loved that fact.
Then I tried to play, and THAT joypad showed serious -critical- problems with wifi signal.
Obviously, I was worried about that problem. I Asked them a new pad and -magic!- they sent it to me in less than 15 days, from US to Italy, without another cent from me.
Sure OUYA started with big problems, but many of them are solved.

From my OUYA experience in those 18 months, I never regret the purchase.

OUYA failed to penetrate the market, OUYA failed to impress positively the press, and now... our cool, little console is in a "limbo" (or a niche, call it as you prefer).
I hope this limbo is big enough for OUYA to continue to live.

1000 games, and more are coming. Hope to reach 2000, who knows.

[Nitrogen_Widget]

Ouya did fire back after the initial reviews on the prototype. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/418...ady-for-review

But damage was certainly done. Demage was certainly also done by the controller issues and exchange, controller latency, external storage delays etc. But I doubt that brought it down, it was an ongoing systematic failure to properly put out fires and at the same time creating fires (free the games fund) that contributed - all the while not properly communicating what was going on . But in the end , I don't think they had enough cash to properly market the thing or put into game development - and we saw what the consequences of that.

Still recoverable in my book. But it will take something special , I would love to see them get an injection of cash so they can stop nickel and diming things and properly have a go at this.

I suspect the majority of ouya owners out there don't know this forum exists or even go to gaming sites yet alone read much of what is out there about ouya on the internet.
The majority of people who own the ouya bought it based off amazon reviews, target reviews, and because it was $99.

I'm also betting the majority of OUYA owners are the type that bought it but don't talk about it much to others.
Same as people with android tablets or roku,firetv,android tv, chromecast, ect.
essentially they aren't a bunch of fan-boi's that need a device to love & a bunch of other devices to hate because it isn't the device they love.

[discotechjam]

Ouya did fire back after the initial reviews on the prototype. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/5/418...ady-for-review

But damage was certainly done. Demage was certainly also done by the controller issues and exchange, controller latency, external storage delays etc. But I doubt that brought it down, it was an ongoing systematic failure to properly put out fires and at the same time creating fires (free the games fund) that contributed - all the while not properly communicating what was going on . But in the end , I don't think they had enough cash to properly market the thing or put into game development - and we saw what the consequences of that.

Still recoverable in my book. But it will take something special , I would love to see them get an injection of cash so they can stop nickel and diming things and properly have a go at this.

The problem is entirely with how the verge chose to frame the ouya's shortcomingns. Every console has problems, but when its the XBOX or PS4, the verge goes out of it's way to qualify those shortcomings.

For the PS4:

The PlayStation 3 is a remarkably different device today than it was seven years ago, when Fatman Scoop showed it to the world. And so will the PlayStation 4 be, seven years from now, probably in ways neither Sony nor I can possibly guess. Right now it’s a fast, powerful console with a great controller and a mostly useful interface — and though there are plenty of bugs and quirks, the only real problem right now is that there’s not a single game that will make anyone leap off their couch to buy a console.

For the XBOXONE:

When Microsoft says it's building a console for the next decade, it's not lying. Where the PlayStation 4 is designed to simply become an ever-better version of itself, the Xbox One is poised to turn into an entirely different, entirely unprecedented device. It may not only supplement, but replace your cable box; it could have a rich, full app store; games are only going to get better, more impressive, and more interactive. The blueprints are all here. Virtually everything Microsoft is trying to do is smart, practical, and forward-thinking — even as they've undone some of the Xbox One's most future-proof innovation over the last few months, Marc Whitten and his team at Microsoft have clearly kept their heads in the future.

For the Ouya:

To its credit, the company says loudly and often that this is only the beginning of a long road for Ouya, and that there will be many changes before its retail launch June 4th — and I'll be watching its progress with interest. But the device is currently being sold as a product, not a prototype, and that's just wrong. Ouya isn't a viable gaming platform, or a good console, or even a nice TV interface. I don't know what it is, but until Ouya figures it out, it's not worth $99.

The message is clear. Buying an XBOX or a PS4 is a long term investment. If there are anf glitches or bugs or it doesn't live up to our expectations, its OK, because it will get even better with time. As for the ouya, it has to be everything that we want right now before its even released while its in beta or else they are a bunch of big mouthed hypocrits that are scamming us out of our money. It's so blantant.

Thanks for pointing out ouya's response! I hadn't seen that before. Frankly, the Verge should have printed a retraction.

The majority of people who own the ouya bought it based off amazon reviews, target reviews, and because it was $99.

Agreed. Perhaps that's why the mainstream coverage of the ouya (like this article) seems out-of-touch. You can declare something "dead" or "forgotten" all you want, but it comes down to sales and customer reviews in my opinion. Right now on Amazon, Ouya really isn't that far behind xbox and ps4 in terms of customer ratings.

[Victor Coleiro]

I wouldn't hold much weight to anything TheVerge says anyway. Remember this is the site that ran the article titled "I don't care if you landed a space craft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing"

[RichRuns]

The Mojo has been permanently reduced to $150. I can't imagine why... If Ouya Everywhere brings all of Ouyas' games and not just select titles, it could be something worth looking into.

[Nitrogen_Widget]

The Mojo has been permanently reduced to $150. I can't imagine why... If Ouya Everywhere brings all of Ouyas' games and not just select titles, it could be something worth looking into.

The problem is it isn't up to OUYA to put the game on mojo.
It's up to the Dev.
which I think is the wrong way to go.

All of discover should be available to mojo automatically.

[ajb999]

All of discover should be available to mojo automatically.

Does the mojo work perfectly with the OUYA sdk and lets say construct 2 and its OUYA plugins?(just because that's what I'm using)

The first game I release will most likely be free but I still wouldn't be comfortable releasing it on the mojo without being able to test it myself first.

[Killswitch]

If you use the ODK, it's supposed to work.