Kickstarter Console Project Meets $950K Goal In Eight Hours

It would be interested to see this being a success and having them take their place on the market, but chances are this will be a catastrophic failure - and even if it is a success, they have a market that already have their consoles.

If they make a console that looks competitive and keeps the low price, that comes out around when the next-generation consoles roll out, they could have a chance. But at that point they are still wouldn't have many (if any) games...

@BBQBram said:

@skyline7284 said:

Who's going to develop for a console with 7,000 units?

Exactly no-one, except for easy ports of flash and browser games.

Hey people, this is just your smartphone in a box for a hundred bucks. The specs are lower than the Wii, and they require free-to-play content for all development on it. It's a freemium casual box that's being hyped on an idea that's not really all there. And people blindly put money into it based on a sleek promo video. Plus, Android is not a game dev's platform of choice, it's a smart phone OS. Damnit.

The form factor could make a difference; Playing on a TV and being able to use tactile, instead of touch, controls could introduce some new game types to the platform. But I agree that the numbers just aren't solid enough. Part of the reason smartphones are popular is because they're multi-purpose; I can browse, check my email and make a call (and a million other things) when I'm not playing games. This is a mono-purpose device that doesn't compete with the other mono-purpose devices on the market.

Why would you want to make a game for something that advertises itself as hackable?

Its reached 2.5 mil already. Now that's a good day and a half of business. Perhaps they should look at improving the basic specs? Oh that's right Its got the power of android already!

@BBQBram said:

@skyline7284 said:

Who's going to develop for a console with 7,000 units?

Exactly no-one, except for easy ports of flash and browser games.

Hey people, this is just your smartphone in a box for a hundred bucks. The specs are lower than the Wii

? The specs are higher than the 360.

@Nethlem said:

@kagato said:

@FuriousJodo said:

@iAmJohn said:

I'm just throwing it out there: this is a terrible idea for a console and the people who have made this succeed are bad people.

I mean, forget how awful Android is as a platform in general with its general lack of standards for everything including apps and compatibility across versions, they're launching this thing on Ice Cream Sandwich? That makes a lot of sense - use an Android base that only 10% of Android users even use with Jelly Bean coming out really soon. Great thinking there guys; that's not going to worsen the market fragmentation issue at all!

Yeah I don't understand why people are freaking out about it. It's essentially an Android phone you plug into your TV. I really don't see it being very successful, it's not like you're going to be playing the new Assassin's Creed on this or anything.

Actually you kind of could with the OnLive app, it works on all my android devices including my ICS phone and i can play all of the current Assassins Creed games on there just now. Its not going to be as clean or as sharp as a proper console version, but people really shouldnt write it off just yet.

Combining two crappy concepts doesn't suddenly make them a single good one..

OnLive comes with it's own set of issues, latency being being one of the bigger ones that will always stay relevant.

Those few people that get an somewhat playable OnLive experience are lucky enough to live somewhere near one of their server-centres, everybody else (read; the majority of people) still get an laggy unplayable mess. At least unless OnLive becomes the next Google with enough money to build massive server-farms all over the world in different countries.

That aside: It's an neat little idea, but people are overestimating what can be done on this. They read "indie games" and think of indie PC games without realizing that it's running on an ARM chip. So porting any PC games over to this will include quite some effort. Not to mention that the hardware specs will be an major bottleneck for porting over future PC games to this.

For people that just want an "emulator home console" it's a dream come true, but those people won't be a market for any possible publishers/developers that plan on making unique games for this system. If there are actually plans for making unique games for this, their hardware specs are in-line with most android tablets. So they certainly plan on staying as "cross platform" as possible with this, which at the same time removes the possibility of it getting unique games tailored to the console.

I do agree to some extent, where as OnLive works well for me i have had friends who havent had a great experiance with it, i just meant to point out that there are options for this like you pointed out with emulaters etc and streaming video and game services. They are also speaking to all of the successfull kickstarter game devs and having them port their games over, Rival Threads is a great looking game that has already signed on as a launch game for example. I do think they could do with upgrading the ram a bit but in concept its a good piece of kit.

Hmmmmmm. This could be......good? I'm not sure. I guess they're hoping for a console version of Steam, but it could end up as another XBL Indie Games or Windows Phone Games for all I know. It seems like they're generating some buzz already, with both consumers and producers, so could come strong out of the gates. And if it does that, I guess anything is possible really.

I can see this working similar to the Iphone compared to the 3DS / Vita. You get a Vita or a 3DS for quality games, and you get a Iphone for the smaller, possibly more causal, games. Hopefully, considering the backers of this thing already, the games on the Ouya will be more artistically inclined instead of terrible money grabs. Although considering I saw the Madden Logo on the top right of one of those screens, who can tell.

I just donated 100 bucks, so I guess that means I'm a future owner. Turn my name the colour of OOH-YAH, Giant Bomb. It's the colour of FREEDOM.

The Tegra 3 and lack of harddrive (it's at least not referenced) makes me skeptical.

The Tegra chipset is ARM-based. ie: It's primarily power and price efficient. It's not a powerhouse. I guess it doesn't need to be. I've not looked into the rumored "PS4"/"Xbox360 2" specs, but my gut feeling is that it won't be able to run "next-gen" titles.

Then again, I wasn't able to quickly find any reasonable comparisons between Tegra 3 performance and other (non-mobile) chipsets. I suppose another reason why it's Tegra 3 is because there are already Android drivers for Tegra 3... should make it very cheap to produce.

And of course, re:Xbox360 issues with lack of harddrive. Add to that the lack of an optical drive and only 8GB of internal flash storage. "Cloud storage" doesn't really cut it either when we're talking about games 20+ GB. Unless this is going to be a glorified Live Arcade with strict rules for filsizes.

Yeeaah... I don't know.

@kagato: They spoke to a ton of indie dev's and told them about the concept and of course those dev's think it's "an neat idea" because of the low entry barrier.

But that doesn't mean that A) They will be making games for it and B) That these games will deliver an quality experience that's unique to OUYA.

Right now there is a lot of smokes and mirrors at work here, their advertising video talks about "Having minecraft" while the guys at mojang haven't heard about that or agreed to anything at that point.

The other issue being that they are really hyping this thing and pushing sales trough artificial scarcity for the cheap reward packages. They started out only offering around 15.000 units at first and every time the 99$ reward nearly sold out they silently added another 5.000 units to the reward. Maybe it's just my sceptical nature, but this kind of behavior smells fishy, especially when they don't add these increases as updates to the kickstarter. It just looks like they are playing mindtricks on the people who want the cheap 99$ version and fear on missing out if they don't buy one right now.

Because it has yet to be clear how sustainable their whole operation is gonna be, for all we know they will only make this first batch. So console-collectors and gadget-nerds want one of these before it's too late and they end up being a rare novelty product if it doesn't manage to deliver on it's promisses.

@Mnemoidian said:

The Tegra 3 and lack of harddrive (it's at least not referenced) makes me skeptical.

The Tegra chipset is ARM-based. ie: It's primarily power and price efficient. It's not a powerhouse. I guess it doesn't need to be. I've not looked into the rumored "PS4"/"Xbox360 2" specs, but my gut feeling is that it won't be able to run "next-gen" titles.

Then again, I wasn't able to quickly find any reasonable comparisons between Tegra 3 performance and other (non-mobile) chipsets. I suppose another reason why it's Tegra 3 is because there are already Android drivers for Tegra 3... should make it very cheap to produce.

And of course, re:Xbox360 issues with lack of harddrive. Add to that the lack of an optical drive and only 8GB of internal flash storage. "Cloud storage" doesn't really cut it either when we're talking about games 20+ GB. Unless this is going to be a glorified Live Arcade with strict rules for filsizes.

Yeeaah... I don't know.

You are kind contradicting yourself here...

You are spot on about the performance of this thing, it's not even close to the performance that we can expect from the next gen of consoles. Heck i would be surprised if it comes close to current-gen consoles in performance. One of the biggest issue being that it only has 1 GB of RAM to stay in line with the current tablet generations. So it's overall performance will stay in the same range as portable devices.

And because of that file, size will not really be an issue (Also keep in mind that it's very likely that it could use USB storage devices). These 20+ GB games you are talking about are only that big because of the high quality assets that get used, but due to the lack of processing power and the small RAM ammount there will be no need for such high quality assets for Ouya games. So you can expect Ouya games to be as big as mobile games are right now. Some might be a little bit bigger but most will stay in the "small size realm", they will never ever come close to heavy lifters like PS3 games that make use of the bluray capacity or multi-disc 360 titles.

I'd buy one just out of curiosity. Something tells me this will not happen though, even though they reached their kickstarter goal. Hey twice the RAM of the 360.....

lol

@iAmJohn: So I think you are missing the point of them using android. It is an open operating system that is easily developed for. Would it have been a better idea for them to use a totally made from scratch os that no one has had any experience on?

Currently unity supports the android operating system so there is already a major game engine on the market that can be used to develop for this consol. Now I personally don't see to many major AAA titles getting into the mix but just the potential for putting netflix and hulu and hell it already has twitch tv on this device is magnificent. This could end up being like a cheaper better version on the xbox in the sense of a home media system.

Also as for market fragmentation, I imagine that this will have its own store so yea it probably will not worsen market fragmentation.

@Sooty said:

@iAmJohn said:

@Sooty said:

@iAmJohn said:

I'm just throwing it out there: this is a terrible idea for a console and the people who have made this succeed are bad people.

I mean, forget how awful Android is as a platform in general with its general lack of standards for everything including apps and compatibility across versions, they're launching this thing on Ice Cream Sandwich? That makes a lot of sense - use an Android base that only 10% of Android users even use with Jelly Bean coming out really soon. Great thinking there guys; that's not going to worsen the market fragmentation issue at all!

It doesn't matter if they use ICS or not, it's gonna be heavily customised anyway, as long as it runs the same games it's a non-issue. Android's a great platform...for phone, not so much tablet or anything else however.

This is a stupid fucking idea and people funding it should be ashamed of themselves.

But how long will that compatibility last? Will they continue to update the firmware to make sure it's compatible with the latest OS, or are they just going to hope that their content producers will keep developing for every version of Android because there's no across the board standard and Google's Android Update Alliance was a titanic failure? That latter issue has been one of the huge sticking points for Android development; this doesn't help.

IIRC all games work as far back as Android 2.2, some go even lower than that - that's already around 2 years back. The games that require Tegra or whatever are a whole different issue however.

I think the only games that people will WANT to play on a non-portable console would be titles that require at LEAST Tegra support.

I'm jumping on the 'this is retarded' bandwagon. I'll buy the first round of beers.

Some of you guys talk about Android OS versions like you know what they mean for game developers; Shockingly little has happened for game developers on Android since 2.3.3. The revisions to the OS have been less about the nitty gritty GPU/audio/input stuff (that you would work with through the C++ NDK) and more about improving the GUI components and java-based app design.

For a game developer on Android, tbh, you don't have to worry about OS pretty much at all if you are working in a traditional way, as opposed to actually building your game frontend through the god awful xml layout stuff, which is a pain in the butt.

As for specs being low, fuck offff. This is clearly not a platform out to compete with the big dogs. It's a ultra small form factor casual gaming console; XBLA is the ballpark, not Xbox 5 or PS4921 or who the fuck cares. This is for playing small, cheap, even free games. It's the Xbox Indie Marketplace given a platform of its own.

I really don't understand the hate this is getting. If you think its a stupid idea, so be it, move along. What's wrong with choice and another way to have games delivered? So many act like entitled fanboys, hey guess what? Not everything is made with "you" in mind. This isn't for everyone and its not meant to be a next Gen console or compete with the big three. I see it mostly being used by indie developers and tinkerers to do what they want (of course emulation won't hurt either). And this whole android vs iOS nonsense is ridiculous. I own an IPad and am typing this on my galaxy nexus with ice cream sandwich. Both platforms have there positives and negatives and I enjoy using both. Would you rather live in a world where no one is taking risks and trying something new? They should be applauded just for that alone. I put my money down for one.

Sorry for the rant, this is actually my first post on the site although I'm a long time reader. I'm just tired of the constant negativity surrounding our hobby sometimes.

@PrivateIronTFU said:

Oh, right. Now I remember why I've been coming to this website less and less.

Yea :\

I really love the site, the community...just damn.

think of what the hackers can do with this they can turn it into a full entertainment system !! for only 99$ !

They say they will deliver overseas but.. March 2013 is being really optimistic. I bet us Brits will have to wait another year and pay twice as much. I'm glad it has had so much backing though. It is pretty cool to think that those on a tight budget can still buy a machine that can play games that are somewhat relevant. I hope it inspires more creativity too.

@BBQBram said:

@skyline7284 said:

Who's going to develop for a console with 7,000 units?

Exactly no-one, except for easy ports of flash and browser games.

Hey people, this is just your smartphone in a box for a hundred bucks. The specs are lower than the Wii, and they require free-to-play content for all development on it. It's a freemium casual box that's being hyped on an idea that's not really all there. And people blindly put money into it based on a sleek promo video. It's not that it isn't cool for what it is for devs and hackers, but the idea of this putting the fear of God into the big three is about as delusional as it is hilarious.

Right... Because the number of units they pre-sold within 1 day, sight unseen from the consumer, through 1 special order outlet (kickstarter) represents the future scope of their install base.

X-Box Live Arcade and PS3 Game Shop requires free content in exactly the same way it's described in the video (a demo) and you can sell your game/app for whatever price you want. Ouya seems to have the structure to support freemium games in a way I wish the bigger consoles offered now (I want PSO2 and Super Monday Night Combat on my X-Box).

Also, you say "no-one" is going to develop for it - Why? Sure, bigger publishers will reach a larger potential audience using an X-Box, but the ecosystem is suffering because of what MS has turned XBLA into, and if you aren't a featured game propped up by marketing placement, you're lost in the shuffle. Based on Microsoft's E3 presser, the obfuscation of content on their marketplace seems to be the way they will continue to trend. The Penny Arcade game that just came out is an interesting example - Would it have done better selling to the people buying Ouya, or buried as it was in the XBox Indie Game channel? A one-man or small-team outfit without a publisher has no reason not to develop for this instead of XB/PS3. "Oh, well, that's dumb, who would want to play a game made by one person?" you might be saying. Dust: An Elysian Tail looks pretty good to me. As the tools to democratize development have grown, I think it's great that a product that democratizes the publishing process is coming to market as well.

You are correct that they have a "slick promo video." I would rather they have that than a "not-slick promo video." It's overselling itself as THE future machine for gamers, but there is a huge market for a device like this (how many kids rooms in America?), especially if it gains more support from developers prior to launch because of the Kickstarter success that came about as a result of the slick video. A "not-slick promo video," or one that underplayed the possibilities involved with a device like this being brought to market, would have been a poor business choice and representative of a misguided company.

Gamers saw the Wii being announced and went "Oh, wow, this is weird, who would buy into this" and the success of an underpowered machine upset the balance of power in the market. I'm not saying that this is the same thing, only that the console market is disrupted with every generation, and this product is coming at a time when it could be disruptive depending on how Ouya handles this initial fanfare and success.

@Nethlem: Yeah, I'm trying to work through my doubt, but not really getting anywhere, sorry about that.

Keep in mind that Xbox360 has 512MB system memory, PS3 has 256MB system and 256MB video memory. Not sure about the WIiU. Though on the other hand (and I realize I'm contradicting myself again), Android is a generic OS, so it is likely it will use more memory than a dedicated console OS... but I don't think the amount of system memory should be a problem.

As for file-size, sure, maybe you are right. But it seems rather self-defeating to put yourself in a "sub-current gen" the year Nintendo catches up to "current gen" and the the year before the rumored launch of the "next gen". *shrug* Maybe I'm overthinking this?

*shrug* I'm probably just trying to figure out if I'm missing the reason why 20 thousand people thought this was an amazing idea.

Anyway, did some research: Fastest Tegra 3 variant currently available seems to be the T33 variant, which is clocked at 1.6GHz in quad-core mode.

here is some relevant info:

Interview with John Carmack saying that the iPad (2) is about half as fast as an Xbox360: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Interview-John-Carmack-id-Software,review-1686-2.html

And Anandtech showing some benchmarking between the iPad 2 and Tegra T33: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5663/analysis-of-the-new-apple-ipad/

Obviously, an off-hand remark by Carmack doesn't weigh as heavily as an actual benchmark, but it's a guideline. And there may be faster Tegra 3 variants available. But seems pretty clear that there's a significant gap in performance between Tegra 3 and "current gen".

@Oddy4000: I've got nothing against small dev teams or even one-man creations. I just don't see this really working out if they need Kickstarter to even get the funds for it in the first place. If their business plan was that great surely some investors would be on board? And the comparison to the Wii is kind of void because this thing has yet to prove there's even a solid market for it whereas the Wii had Nintendo backing it with endless marketing dollars. They're asking for a million bucks which Nintendo probably spends on R&D alone for a potential console in it's starting phases.

This could be a succes, but a niche one at best and it certainly won't make the big three rethink their ethos. I just don't like their blatant pandering to everyone eager for a "people's revolution".

@Brodehouse said:

@Nethlem I... Do you expect the next generation of consoles to cost 99 dollars? Comparing next gen to Ouya seems like about as valid a comparison as comparing them to a 3DS or a Vita. And actually, this thing is cheaper than both of those, and more powerful. All I care about is games, I don't want any console because it's a new console, I want it because I want to play games. I'm constantly impressed by how little people actually want new things to exist. They say they do, but they're lying. Not even a matter of wanting it for themselves, they don't want it to _exist_.

I'm only comparing it to next-gen and current-gen consoles because people come up with this comparisson, sorry for trying to shed some light into this debate for the people who have trouble catalogizing as to what to make of this.

And considering that Ouya is fighting for shares on the same market, the comparisson is valid if you put in place the right criteria (which i believe i did) and point out the flaws and difficulties this will most likely run into.

Ouya is nothing else but a stationary Tegra3 platform running Android, not more not less. In layman terms: You are trading portability for a cheaper entry price, whatever this thing can do, you gonna be able to do the same with the Tegra3 tablets just at a higher entry price point while having portability.

That's also the central issue i have with this, it doesn't bring anything new to the table, except making the entry bar for consumers into the Android market somewhat lower. Sure it's also a neat little gadget for living-room multi media and playing emulators on your big screen with an controller. But that's an niche market and it's unclear if it's an sustainable market to build a new segment of gaming around.

I just get tired of people throwing around stupid buzzwords to give the impression of something "revolutionary new!" being in the making. Indies, Mobile gaming, social gaming it's all the hot shit right now yett nobody has actually managed to deliver but market enterpreteurs get wet panties all over the place like they just reinvented the wheel. There is no "killerapp" in terms of gaming for android phones, there ain't even one for iOS devices which have an far easier time in terms of marktet penetration and customer base segmentation. Whatever Ouya is gonna be able to do, you will be able to do the same things with an tablet and next gen smart phones, so excuse me if i don't jump on the "zomg this is the next big thing!" hypetrain when it's basically just another little box you can put in your living room that doesn't offer anything new of real value compared to just hooking up an Android smartphone or tablet. So if you wanna play games? Then you can just stick to your portable Android device and will get exactly the same experience that Ouya is gonna deliver, there won't be any "Ouya exclusives" because it would be counter-intuitive to one of it's biggest bullet points (huge customer base do to big andoid install base).

You want a little "emulator console" that can stream media content, has a fancy design and a cheap entry price? Sure then Ouya is your thing, but like i said: That's a rather niche market and developers won't be able to make tons of money from such an userbase that mostly sticks to emulating oldschool consoles on their bigscreen.

@Mnemoidian: The issue with hardware performance always boils down to "what you actually wanna do with it". So it's not easy to compare hardware on a direct basis except it's direcly related to each other. Comparing PC hardware works for that reason, comparing PC performance to console performance is kinda more difficult tho because console games are usually better optimized as developers work with standartized hardware specs and can tailor their code around that.

And that's also gonna be the problem for Ouya, sure it sets an common standard for Android gaming, but it's an low standard that's allready way outdated at release. The openess and low entry bar for developing could make up for that by delivering unique gaming experiences. But developers that want that can allready work on the PC platform and actually do so. So unless somebody developes something akin to the next World of Warcraft for Android then this won't leave a huge footprint in the gaming world. Sure there is potential here for merging portable and console gaming in a way we haven't seen before, but potential is kinda pointless if nobody manages to make use of it.

I backed this because I like idea and mind set. I'm not hoping for some next gen experience and by no means does any of the fast money gain mean it'll be more then a footnote in a few years. But I'm interested what will happen once it becomes either big or fail and the creators let it silently go. What the community might do with it simply because it's hackable at either point. Whatever the outcome it's an experiment that ultimately gamers and developers will both learn from.

So people are really only interested in this to emulate stuff, right? Okay. Seems crazy.

DIS IS JUSTAFONE. IS A SCAM HERPLEDERPLEPERPLEFERPLE

If Xbox Live or PSN or Steam indie games level of quality can be delivered on this, HELL YEAH!

@AssInAss:

Yeah, but....why should I buy this thing if I already have Steam, Xbox live or PSN? I mean I get it why developers may be excited for this, but I don't get why I should be excited for it. So what, now I can play iPhone games on my TV? Doesn't sound that compelling. Maybe I totally miss the point though, but what should be my reason for buying this if I'm not interested in programming games?

Buying into an unproven hardware platform from an unproven company seems extremely short-sighted to me. I guess that's what kickstarter is all about though and I can't fault the idea at least. Really hope no one gets burned by this.

This is really interesting. The thing I find most curious about this is the open platform portion of it. If it works as they intend to as a platform for smaller and independent developers to get their games to TV, then it will be a huge success. Not having to deal with microsoft and Sony to get your indie game to the television will likely be a huge advantage for many smaller developers.

@Sporkbane said:

Not having to deal with microsoft and Sony to get your indie game to the television will likely be a huge advantage for many smaller developers.

Sure, but it will probably also be an advantage for jerks, who just release a half-assed rip-off of another game while good games get lost in the flood. Wasn't that the reason for the first video game crash? I dunno, I guess I don't know enough about Ouya (still somehow a better name than WiiU) but I don't get it.

@Abendlaender said:

@AssInAss:

Yeah, but....why should I buy this thing if I already have Steam, Xbox live or PSN? I mean I get it why developers may be excited for this, but I don't get why I should be excited for it.

This is pretty much exactly how I'm looking at it- it's understandable that indies want some additional medium away from the supposedly harsh verification processes of Steam, Xbox Live, and PSN...

But we don't know what games they are possibly getting- outside of potentially Minecraft and Canabalt. Will it indeed be nothing but phone games- or will actual quality indie games come to the system?

@AssInAss said:

If Xbox Live or PSN or Steam indie games level of quality can be delivered on this, HELL YEAH!

In short- it's QUITE clear they are hoping for this^ :P

I'll wait and see on this one- but it does seem interesting, and would possibly be even more interesting if it ends up being successful. :O

She scares me...

I really like this idea and the Twitch.tv app is awesome. I am surprisingly interested in it, but I wish they would not say all the games are free to play when they really mean demos.

I wonder how many of the investors were android game devs

@SeriouslyNow said:

DIS IS JUSTAFONE. IS A SCAM HERPLEDERPLEPERPLEFERPLE

Resistance is futile?

Maybe this can be reduced to something like this:

Do you want a non-portable PS Vita-like TV based console that has an open platform and is cheap, but has zero publisher relations and a microscopic unproven manufacturer behind it, sometime in 2013+?

These guys are almost at 3 million now. That really surprises me. I would have expected a Kickstarter like this to get something closer to 1337 bucks and some silly comments. This project just SCREAMS risky investment. Regardless of what you think about the idea, it is clearly a relatively ambitious and expensive endevour that seems to have great potential for failure. AFAIK the kickstarters are straight up screwed if the company just burns through the money and dies before delivery.

"Who's going to develop for a console with 7,000 units?"

Well, how about 20,000 units? And that's about 24 hours in. I imagine that number is going to go up. Also, for a less sarcastic response:

"PLEDGE $699 OR MORE

200 BACKERS SOLD OUT (0 of 200 remaining)

Developer Special. A first-run OUYA (already rooted so you can just get going), EARLY SDK ACCESS, an extra controller, and we'll help you get started. We'll also help you promote your game for ONE YEAR, and your games will be marked with a FOUNDER EMBLEM."

So apparently at least 200 devs. And I've spoken to other devs who were interested but missed the window.

The fact that this is Android is irrelevant to the types of games people will make for it. Saying this is "for angry birds & mobile games"... doesn't make sense. You have to look at this from a dev's PoV to understand why it's exciting. The industry folks are hyped over this. That's all you need to know.

@SoothsayerGB said:

The ad bothers me. I don't understand tech stuff but the ad seems to focus primarily on the idea as a marketing gimmick. It's a computer sold as an console, with a craptasticly awful looking controller?

The controller looks slick to me...but I can't really judge until I see one in person.

@SoothsayerGB said:

The ad bothers me. I don't understand tech stuff but the ad seems to focus primarily on the idea as a marketing gimmick. It's a computer sold as an console, with a craptasticly awful looking controller?

The controller looks slick to me...

It's almost at 3 million any minute now. And also, why all the hate? I think it could be cool. It's also great to hear that people are actually willing to try something new!

This will make an amazing HTPC not necessarily the hardware or the form factor but the large community that will hop up around it as anyone who has setup a XBMC\openelec MythTV or WMC, Mediaportal its a pain lots of fiddling having this run with a stable dis of XBMC or a fork like openelec built around it should take alot of the hard work out

I think its crazy they did not really push that in the video it looks like it could eclipse WD Live TV and they sell

I can´t say anything other than this is very interesting. There are too many pros and cons to this that I seriously can´t fathom to start pointing them out. Let´s all hope this is something to look for in the future.

@l3reak said:

The fact that this is Android is irrelevant to the types of games people will make for it. Saying this is "for angry birds & mobile games"... doesn't make sense. You have to look at this from a dev's PoV to understand why it's exciting. The industry folks are hyped over this. That's all you need to know.

Looking at it from a dev's PoV it would make total sense to stick to "angry birds & mobile games". In terms of performance and OS this will be just the same as most advanced android tablets/phones at the time of it's release. So why would a developer willingfully make a game that caters only to a small portion of the overall android base? The only advantage Ouya has over the mobile devices is the controller (Oh it can be connected to TV's! What an revelation!) and even that is not an real unique advantage, as you can pair most controllers to mobile android devices and HDMI outputs become more and more an standard. So most games should be easily portable from the mobile devices to Ouya and the other way around. Heck they even advertise it as one of the bulletpoints for the thing:

Because OUYA is based on Android, any app developer could publish their Android app to OUYA.

It's one of it's strong points (instant big customer base, cover two markets with one release) but also one of it's big issues, what about this thing should give developers an incentive to get more creative then they allready can be on android? Or compared to developing on the PC?

The only one i could come up with is merging portable devices and the Ouya in such a way that you have a consistent gaming experience trough all platforms, kinda like the "Transfarring" concept by Kojima. There is quite some potential there to do something actually new of relevance to the core gamer market but it's gonna require time and most of all luck for it to actually work.

And Industry folks get excited and hyped by all kinds of stuff that potentially gives them more money or easier acces to bigger markets. Including overpriced on disc DLC, pay2win shemes, social/casual games, pre-order ideas and similar shennigans. For years we've heard the story of "mobile games being the future" and the biggest thing we got out of that had been... angry birds, so yay? In the end it's the customers that have to pay money, so it's the customers that need to be convinced. It ain't as easy as the producer dictating what the customer should buy into because some people who work in the industry think it could "potentially be cool" without having any solid ideas or concepts to show off. That's not how free markets work ;)

So excuse me if i'm not as gullible that i just "need to know" that some guys who made some indie games like the idea. Until they can show some actual concrete concepts and ideas for this thing i'm gonna stay sceptical and consider this an novelty piece of hardware for console collectors and tech-geeks that like to mess around with hardware platforms, that's nothing bad at all but it certainly ain't the next revolution of gaming.

Over three million in somewhere near a day. Holy crap.

@Mumrik said:

Maybe this can be reduced to something like this:

Do you want a non-portable PS Vita-like TV based console that has an open platform and is cheap, but has zero publisher relations and a microscopic unproven manufacturer behind it, sometime in 2013+?

These guys are almost at 3 million now. That really surprises me. I would have expected a Kickstarter like this to get something closer to 1337 bucks and some silly comments. This project just SCREAMS risky investment. Regardless of what you think about the idea, it is clearly a relatively ambitious and expensive endevour that seems to have great potential for failure. AFAIK the kickstarters are straight up screwed if the company just burns through the money and dies before delivery.

If kickstarter has proven anything it's that people are more than willing to throw their money away on a gamble with very little information than on a well defined product that already exists. I really really don't understand what the point of this console is. They act like Android is breaking down all these barriers for devs but honestly all it's doing is creating a market place that's 99% shovelware and ripoffs, and 1% decent mobile games. I guess you can't really put a price on pulling the lever on this fucking slot machine.

I don't understand why this is so interesting.

BAD IDEA (this is my input)