Web Roundup: 17th April: Garage Sale

[James Andrew Coote]

Joystiq in their drip-feed articles on OUYA liken it to a garage sale of games (i.e. a mixed bag):
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/04/17/ou...tarter-review/

Edit: Poor old joystiq found their article out of date within the hour, and decided to put out a separate article to correct that:
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/04/17/ou...-card-changes/

OUYA is still getting compared as a contender to the big 3:
http://www.cgmagazine.ca/articles/ed...e-bigwigs.html

Interesting article summarising a lot of what has come up in the news for OUYA in the past few weeks:
http://dealnews.com/features/Wait-to...h-/690368.html (note: has pop-up adverts on first opening)

Finally, our favourite site for all things OUYA (not) the Verge cites OUYA as an example of how kickstarter has evolved into a pre-orders platform:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/17/42...ept-when-it-is

p.s. I've been away for a few days, but in the meantime there were basically a bazillion articles on the Futuremark benchmark results for the OUYA devkit that you can find pretty easily by having a search on google or twitter

[MetalFlanger]

I just don't understand why TheVerge felt the need to write that article, or why average human beings cannot understand the concept of Kickstarter.

When I backed my first project, it took me all of two minutes to research and understand that I might not get the product I supported if things didn't pan out.

It's not rocket science.

[James Andrew Coote]

It looks and feels too similar to a commercial site. You see something cool, pay some money, and select a product you wish to receive. Maybe some of the steps are in a different order, but otherwise it is just like buying something. A lot of projects take the same attitude. I don't think pebble and OUYA are very good examples in this regard. Some of the games projects I've seen on kickstarter are far worse in just straight up using it for pre-orders

Personally, I've backed about 15 kickstarter projects, and so far only claimed rewards on two of them. Either I selected a reward but just never claimed when the kickstarter succeeded, or when I pledged, I only put down a couple of dollars, and I'm not really interested in getting a branded eraser or pack of stickers through the post that probably cost the project creator more to post than the amount I donated (thus somewhat defeating the point of me backing them)