Please stop whining about Ouya shipments!

[James Andrew Coote]

For developers like myself and arctic, we slapped down $700+ on OUYA, which is a lot more than the $99 most people risked.

And you know what? OUYA have come up good and then some. I've received my OUYA devkit on time. It's worked great, been fantastically easy to get going with development. But on top of that, OUYA have been incredibly supportive, and exceptionally open. I've been able to talk freely and openly about my OUYA experience, been able to take my OUYA to gamejams and comic conventions, industry events and meetups with other developers. Try doing that with a PS4

If I was developing for the OUYA, but was just a regular kickstarter backer, I'd probably find it incredibly frustrating that I couldn't just get on with making my game, and at the same time see the opportunity of getting my game ready in time for launch slipping away.

So I can empathise. But I'm not in that situation, so I'm going to continue to be cheerleading for the OUYA for the foreseeable future

[rushmore]

Yeah I bet she would like to refund most backers so they could focus on retail and use our $8.5 million as a 9 month unrest free loan. Wow she is so nice

Yep. Some folks seem to focus on the romance side that this device was made out of love and only that. This is a business that's foundation was built by Kick starter funds. Everything is peaches and cream as long as there is cash flow. Per Ouya's boss they are very dependent on people buying apps in their market and spare controllers. Given the controller issue, perception is not the best out of the gate. Factor in the Game stick people seem to have better marketing skills, the romance side is tenuous.

Ouya needs a successful retail launch out of the gate. I think they have a great shot.

[fireballs]

3 of the hardest parts of a upstart tech company are transferring your build from paper to a functioning piece of equipment, funding and name recognition. Last July they stated they were very far along and already had a functioning prototype and with how quickly the OUYA backers gave their support through Kickstarter they got 9 times their desired funding and a HUGE amount of publicity. When Kickstarter finished OUYA was in a great position.

[arcticdog]

BTW Artic are you saying that we can only talk about positive things involving the OUYA in these forums? Or only things you agree with? Is there a list of what we can or can't talk about or how many times we can say things? These rules must be like OUYAs shipping updates, you have to figure it out yourself I guess.

No. I wasn't attempting to censor you. And the minute this community turns into something like that, I'm out of here.

In fact, I'm guilty of saying negative things about them here as well.

I've been a pretty vocal critic of a lot of things I believe they've not done correctly. And guess what? Others have disagreed with me. Respectfully.

I've been doing software and product development for more than 15 years now (ugh, I'm old). I've led projects budgeted in the 6 and 7 figure range by the time the products were delivered. Not too far off from OUYA from a financial risk standpoint. And I can tell you that it's an art form in itself to not deliver a product late. It requires a lot of anticipation of reactions, realistic time management, intuition that comes with experience, intimate knowledge of the domain and luck. Other than luck, few starter companies are blessed with this knowledge base. Julie has been lucky enough to surround herself with some very experienced and brilliant people. And they are STILL delivering later than they announced. But not by much if you compare to a lot of other projects out there.

My "PR" accusations come from anecdotal examples from my own experiences. Every company (including OUYA) believes they're a unique snowflake. But in the end it all comes down to the same patterns, same mistakes and same customer reactions. But you know, any time someone defends an unpopular action or mis-step by a company, they GOTTA be working for them, right?

But what I'm saying is.. Everyone who contributed is responsible for their own decision to do so. It's not like OUYA has had a trend of unpredictable behavior. And this behavior was exhibited well before the deadline to pull pledges. If a company doesn't give frequent updates during their fundraising campaign, don't expect them later to do it later when there is more work to do. No matter WHAT they promise.

P.S. Thanks for the apology. I apologize if I gave you the idea that opinions on any side other than mine aren't welcome. To be honest with you, in product development, criticisms are better feed back than praise provided they are constructive. I just personally think the hatred due to a common problem like a missed ship/delivery date is misappropriated and far constructive. I highly doubt they were deliberate in their actions that have triggered this outburst of anger.

[Grimbarian]

I've never really seen the point in starting a thread with your own opinion telling other people that you don't like them communicating their opinions...

All it does (for proof see last 3 pages) is start the conversation all over again in another thread and take up more forum space. Ahhh well.

[AdyCarter]

Indeed.

Please stop whining about whining about Ouya shipments.
Sent from my RM-825_eu_euro1 using Foroplex

[rushmore]

True. The premise of the thread seems a self fulfilled opinion. In fact, the most common thread for new devices appears to be this type of thread.

People should whine out of principle

[Yart]

Yea the Ouya community as a whole has been making me facepalm pretty hard recently.

You waited half a year already. What's another couple weeks?

You'd be surprised just how much flak they're getting. I recently gave them an email encouraging them and telling them I understand instead of yelling at them and they were very thankful and gave me an idea of just how many nasty messages they were receiving every day. (They don't want the delays either, believe me)

Shame on you guys... the whiny kids that is. Put yourself in that position and see what happens when something doesn't go 100% as planned, and put yourself before that huge crowd of wolves. And for the developers whining, just wait until you slip up and miss a release date on a game, or tell people you have to delay your game to fix a bug.

And yes, I'm excited for my system too. I'm also game developing for it. Oh well. Big whoop. When the time comes, the time comes.

[JCPRuckus]

If you follow tech news generally, then you should know that every hardware startup ships late... If at all. Usually, the product is so late as to be irrelevant. We're talking in the 6 months - 1 year range. By comparison what's going on with OUYA is trivial. That is why people are telling you that you shouldn't complain. Because your expectations apparently were, and clearly are unrealistic.

Even companies with years of experience shipping products against deadlines miss sometimes. Expecting a company with zero experience doing so to perfectly estimate deadlines 9 months out is ludicrous.

So while we all understand that the situation is frustrating. In the grand scheme of things, we're actually lucky it'll only be a month or two late, and only for some of us. Not only will complaining over and over again not make this any less true, it will not make your OUYA arrive quicker either.

There's no point in being upset about things that are basically inevitable. And there's no point being upset about things that you can't change. OUYA shipping late is both these things, so getting upset about it is doubly pointless.

[lartomar2002]

If you follow tech news generally, then you should know that every hardware startup ships late... If at all. Usually, the product is so late as to be irrelevant. We're talking in the 6 months - 1 year range. By comparison what's going on with OUYA is trivial. That is why people are telling you that you shouldn't complain. Because your expectations apparently were, and clearly are unrealistic.

Even companies with years of experience shipping products against deadlines miss sometimes. Expecting a company with zero experience doing so to perfectly estimate deadlines 9 months out is ludicrous.

So while we all understand that the situation is frustrating. In the grand scheme of things, we're actually lucky it'll only be a month or two late, and only for some of us. Not only will complaining over and over again not make this any less true, it will not make your OUYA arrive quicker either.

There's no point in being upset about things that are basically inevitable. And there's no point being upset about things that you can't change. OUYA shipping late is both these things, so getting upset about it is doubly pointless.

Even though I can find no fault with your argument, well, maybe one. Ouya is a new company, granted but, some of the people involved are not new to the industry and are well aware of these problems. So, yes, there are problems with any start up but, it does not make it less hard to swallow. Being this is my first involvement in something like this I was naive about all of the different twist and turns, live and learn.