Is Ouya for real?

I just watched the video in Alex's report and once I heard Julie Uhrman start talking my bullshit detector started going wild; indie games are having problems getting on consoles? veteran of the gaming industry? Julie Uhrman

They don't even have a website, their url is a .tv address(they don't have the .com!?!?!) and it just links back to the kickstarter page.

They only registered it less than a month ago:

Based on what they have shown in their promo video; one would think they have been at this a lot longer than a month.

Now for the actual hardware; the specs that they are selling: tegra3, 1gb ram, 8gb internal storage, ICS; it's exactly the same as the other android darling that was recently announced, the Nexus 7 which will cost at a bare minimum $200; a price that most tech journalists seem convinced that Google is selling at a loss. How could an unproven small company possibly expect to undercut Google by half? While there is no screen or battery these components do not make up half the cost and there is still the controller that Ouya includes with the console. It's easy to see why Google would do this, and even Amazon with the Fire, but there appears to be no angle here and that is troubling.

These guys aren't the first ones to try something like this either Zeebo was supposed to be a cheap console for 3rd world countries, it sold for 500 Brazil reais = 245 U.S. dollars when it came out and it failed.

It's funded now, I guess we'll see what happens when December rolls around and these things are supposed to ship, good luck to anyone that got in on this.

actually if phones are anything like TV's the overwhelming bulk of the price does come from the screen. I've done support for TV's and android based tablet units in the past and screens were the most expensive by a fair bit in both cases (though more so with tv's because there is just less other stuff).

Either way, I think it seems cool, but I wouldn't put any money in the kickstarter, I would need to see this be a finished thing before I would put any money down on it.

Yeah, I'm finding the whole thing slightly dubious too. The thing is; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft don't just have a bunch of money behind them; they also have a lot of other things to back them up - publishers, first party developers, a long history of reliable products, well known IPs, loyal customers, etc...

The Ouya is definitely a nice idea; however, even if this thing manages to get off the ground, I'm struggling to see how it would succeed - especially since this console generation is winding down, so the price for new consoles is relatively low anyway.

My problem is it seems l

As real as the Phantom console.

Well it will definitely have some people day one. Considering it's already raised over a million dollars. Even if it turns out crap. He only asked for 950k right so he can just make a crappy thing for that amount and then keep all the extra money people are giving him?

@Redsox44 said:

Well it will definitely have some people day one. Considering it's already raised over a million dollars. Even if it turns out crap. He only asked for 950k right so he can just make a crappy thing for that amount and then keep all the extra money people are giving him?

Almost all of the money they have raised is from people essentially preordering the actual consoles for $99, there is almost no extra money the way that some other kickstarters sometimes get.

Yeah, I wouldn't be all that surprised if no one ever heard from these people again.

I do think this will be a big failure, I'm not even sure it will ever get built. (Also a part of me is having my bullshit / scam detector going off).

But in the end, if the console gets made and all, what games am I going to play on it? Upscaled games from the Android Mobile store?

I don't really see how you can sell a console without any games, and I don't see how they can get anyone to make any notable games for it.

EDIT: The only way I really could see this being a success, would be if they got some "famous" developers / publishers behind it. AND released it around the same time as the next-generation of consoles, while remaining competitive in features and graphics, and still holding a lower price point (not necessarily the price they are talking about now though).

The problem with it is there's not that many good games on Android, if this was IOS this would be a different story. Not to mention that phone games are on phones for a reason. They are short, on-the-go games that are supposed to keep you busy for a couple minutes.

@Kidavenger said:

I just watched the video in Alex's report and once I heard Julie Uhrman start talking my bullshit detector started going wild; indie games are having problems getting on consoles? veteran of the gaming industry? Julie Uhrman

They don't even have a website, their url is a .tv address(they don't have the .com!?!?!) and it just links back to the kickstarter page.

Some googleling around have produced some articles claiming she has held executive positions at IGN, Gamefly and Vivendi. Of course that's not confirmation of anything. Her LinkenIn and twitter profiles only lists her as "Founder of OUYA".

Also apparently the company is also called Boxer8? At least the same people that registered that ouya.tv domain also registered boxer8.com in Febuary 28 2012. Also just a redirect at the moment, it links to this wikipedia article....

You definitely bring up some good points. Now looking at the specs, you are right, I don't know if they can break even with the device at sub-$100. I have my doubts, but only thing we can do is wait and see.

Pretty sure it is not a scam.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2012/07/ouya-to-launch-new-video-game-console/1#.T_zcG_Uusk0

Other big names on board include Minecraft developer Markus "Notch" Persson, who plans to deliver an updated version of his hit game for the console. Indie game designer Adam Saltzman (Canabalt) is another supporter, as are former Microsoft Xbox executive Ed Fries, Peter Pham of incubator firm Science and longtime video game executive Brian Fargo, founder of InXile Entertainment and previously at Interplay, who is also an investor.

Other investors include Jawbone founder Hosain Rahman, Digg founder Jay Adelson, Flixster founder Joe Greenstein, Amol Sarva, founder of cloud software company Peek and Eric Hautemont, co-founder of board game publisher Days of Wonder.

If it is fake, then they suckered a lot of people. That would be pretty funny.

Do you people even look into this before you go off on this nonsense? I know numbers are fun, but the company has backing from a couple of high-level indie developers like Notch and the developers of Canabalt.

I still don't understand the cynicism everyone seems to be having towards something that a lot of us had been wanting a for a while. Regardless of the ability to do this already, there isn't a stand-alone product that really allows this sort of thing work and I think that is great.

It doesn't seem to be a scam unless they made up all the indie developer quotes on the Kickstarter page, in which case I think those guys would've heard about it by now and debunked the console.

wait, what? so this is a console purely for android games? again, what?

@killacam said:

wait, what? so this is a console purely for android games? again, what?

Also actually running android and completely open and hackable. At least that's the part that's getting me interested.

I think you're being way too suspicious about if it's a real thing or not. I believe it will come out, whether or not it succeeds is where the interesting part is. I'm glad there's people out there making weird out of the box things like this.

Creating and registering a domain name are always the FIRST steps to any serious company.

@demonknightinuyasha: So your problem is not with Ouya, but with Kickstarter itself?

@CrazyBagMan said:

I think you're being way too suspicious about if it's a real thing or not. I believe it will come out, whether or not it succeeds is where the interesting part is. I'm glad there's people out there making weird out of the box things like this.

It's already succeeded, have you seen the kickstarter page? If it has gathered this amount of praise in one day, I'm sure it will be pretty successful.

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CrazyBagMan said:

I think you're being way too suspicious about if it's a real thing or not. I believe it will come out, whether or not it succeeds is where the interesting part is. I'm glad there's people out there making weird out of the box things like this.

It's already succeeded, have you seen the kickstarter page? If it has gathered this amount of praise in one day, I'm sure it will be pretty successful.

The money made before the product exists really has nothing to do with its success. Nearly all (if not all) of that money will go into developing and creating this thing and if it isn't a good product at launch and no one beyond the kickstarter investors buys it then it will still fail.

It's basically the same as some big corporation saying "Sure, take a million or 2 and go make this thing" at this point. Zero guarantee of success.

Could this finally be the end of Kickstarter? What if this thing doesn't come out? There'll be a LOT of pissed off people. And I'm guessing most of those people would never back anything else.

i saw this, it doesn't seem great. it just kind of sounds like it's a driod that can be plugged into a tv. i don't really support kickstarters as you don't know if things are actually going to be coming out or not.

@brownsfantb said:

Could this finally be the end of Kickstarter? What if this thing doesn't come out? There'll be a LOT of pissed off people. And I'm guessing most of those people would never back anything else.

That has literally been said about EVERY kickstarter project that has ever gotten more then 100k dollars.

The woman in the video came off as super aggressive to me, very off-putting. I felt like she was shaking me down for my money.

Also I don't really think having Notch on board for a Minecraft port is really a big deal. I'm pretty sure those guys would put Minecraft on anything.

@killacam said:

wait, what? so this is a console purely for android games? again, what?

It's a console that runs Android, this is feel is a key distinction people don't seem to be making. It CAN play existing android games but that's just some thing it happens to be able to do as a result of the base operating system, the unit itself will receive it's own fair share of original content.

As far as the per unit costs, this thing would be quite easy to built and sell for $99 (look at the Raspberry Pi). The single most expensive parts in a smart phone or tablet are

• The display (both the panel and the capacitive layer
• The Battery
• In some cases the cellular radio

This has none of those components included, the controller may add to the price but not by much.

With the low cost I could see this doing relatively well in developing markets given the right oportunity.

To be fair, 500 reais is expensive. I mean, the brazilian minimum wage is 600 reais a month, so, Zeebo was still pretty expensive. Oh, about Ouya? I don't think it's a scam.

@NickL said:

@BestUsernameEver said:

@CrazyBagMan said:

I think you're being way too suspicious about if it's a real thing or not. I believe it will come out, whether or not it succeeds is where the interesting part is. I'm glad there's people out there making weird out of the box things like this.

It's already succeeded, have you seen the kickstarter page? If it has gathered this amount of praise in one day, I'm sure it will be pretty successful.

The money made before the product exists really has nothing to do with its success. Nearly all (if not all) of that money will go into developing and creating this thing and if it isn't a good product at launch and no one beyond the kickstarter investors buys it then it will still fail.

It's basically the same as some big corporation saying "Sure, take a million or 2 and go make this thing" at this point. Zero guarantee of success.

What I mean is people are clearly interested, so much so that this project has gotten 2 million in such a short amount of time. Pile on news stories, exposure, and word of mouth, and this thing probably is looking hopeful for the people producing it.

Well the price thing is easily explained by yo, there's no fancy screen or digitizer to worry about. But yeah I'm a tad skeptical. I'm not really interested anyway.

Hmm...I just hope that it isn't a scam. I will reserve my judgement upon this Ouya system until I get word of a decent lineup of games and see it in action somewhere down the road. It has potential...

Their has been quite a bit of talk that either this is a scam or the dudes are completely naive. It's a neat idea, especially at the price, but their is way too many doubts currently for my to bite.

I'll be amazed if something even marginally functional comes out of this. People need to think more before they plunk down money for an ephemeral idea. There's a whole lot of bull shit on Kickstarter and this a yet another example.

It's real. You don't employ a world famous industrial design specialist and partner with the world's most successful GPU manufacturer as part of a scam.

@BrockNRolla said:

I'll be amazed if something even marginally functional comes out of this. People need to think more before they plunk down money for an ephemeral idea. There's a whole lot of bull shit on Kickstarter and this a yet another example.

Wat. There's nothing ephemeral about this. They have working models already out there. They have the marketing and 'bizcom' relationships in place too. What they are doing with this KS is to generate a new round of developer relationships and early sign ups.

@brownsfantb said:

Could this finally be the end of Kickstarter? What if this thing doesn't come out? There'll be a LOT of pissed off people. And I'm guessing most of those people would never back anything else.

Wow, that's a lot of ifs...

@BestUsernameEver: well in the context of this product. I've already dropped down on plenty of games on kickstarter (double fine adventure, republique`, wasteland 2, that shadowrun game, a table top game where you battle mechs made of legos, banner saga, probably a few others, I'm just listing these off the top of my head). I just don't know that I feel like this thing is going to come out and be what they say it's going to be, but I also like the idea and would like to see it happen and be awesome. I'm pretty skeptical of kickstarters in general. Everything I've put money down on has been either because it's a name I recognize (such as Tim Schafer or Ryan Payton) or because it was a project I saw Tycho talk about on the front page of Penny Arcade (such as the Lego mech game and banner saga). Though my buddy has done kickstarter for a number of board games that have worked out ok so I'm not completely skeptical of it.

Jesus christ, check out the tin foil hat action going on in here.

A part of me hopes that they take the money and disappear. I would laugh so hard and people would finally realize how kickstarter works. It's bound to happen with some project sooner or later. Unfortunately I don't think this one is a scam.

Please, explain to me how Kickstarter works, Pekarn.

A part of me hopes that they take the money and disappear. I would laugh so hard and people would finally realize how kickstarter works. It's bound to happen with some project sooner or later. Unfortunately I don't think this one is a scam.

Even after watching the videos and reading up on the Ouya for quite a bit, I still need help and further clarification on what it really does. 
 
What type of games will I get to play on the Ouya? Will it be able to compete with the current generation of consoles or does it aim to compete with the next? I understand that the console is supposed to evolve and grow based on the users but what can one generally expect from buying an Ouya console? 
 
All I've seen so far is support from Twitch TV and the Minecraft devs, which are all multiplatform. What's unique to the Ouya?

I don't think it's a scam, there is nothing wrong with being skeptical but the fact that Brian Fargo and some other known names in the industry seem to endorse it and are involved there is no reason to jump to such a conclusion so early.

I haven't paid any attention to this specific case, but there's always a chance you aren't going to get what you paid for on KS. Time will tell, but I'd imagine it won't turn out to be a small chance either. I don't think that's going to 'kill' Kickstarter (it's the risk you take), but people will probably learn not to throw money around quite as freely as they are at the moment.

I doubt it's a scam but I'm not sure what to think of this concept yet... Maybe some cool stuff will come out of it since after people go nuts with hacking and tweaking this box.

@SeriouslyNow said:

It's real. You don't employ a world famous industrial design specialist and partner with the world's most successful GPU manufacturer as part of a scam.

@BrockNRolla said:

I'll be amazed if something even marginally functional comes out of this. People need to think more before they plunk down money for an ephemeral idea. There's a whole lot of bull shit on Kickstarter and this a yet another example.

Wat. There's nothing ephemeral about this. They have working models already out there. They have the marketing and 'bizcom' relationships in place too. What they are doing with this KS is to generate a new round of developer relationships and early sign ups.

"In 2009, he collaborated with Ethan Imboden of Jimmyjane on a line of waterproof rechargeable vibrators."

- Yves' Wikipedia Article

EXCELLENT.

What I don't understand is why the console has such a horrendous name. Ouya sounds at least as shitty as WiiU.