The company behind the Ouya has existed for three months

@Karkarov: You'll have to try harder than that to get an angry reaction out of me.

@thirty_four: I never said that I don't want journalists to report on the project or company. The more information they can glean, the better, but I don't need them holding my hand on the matter either. I also never really said that I was confident that the project would be a success but that doesn't stop me from being excited about it.

I haven't backed the project. Maybe if and when they actually show a product or prototype, but until then I am remaining cautiously optimistic.

@Brendan said:

Yo guys, we don't know very much about the business world, discuss.

Maybe you dont, But I make over 75,000 in farming alone on my Partnership.

I agree with everything the video says. A cheap open console that is easy to develop for is a good thing. I'm sure that part is possible. I'm more concerned with how they actually get that done by March. All indications are that the final design is not done and they only have one prototype. Software and hardware development takes a long time. We have no indication on how close they are to finishing those two aspects and are being asked to spend money on a leap of faith that they can finish this in the 8th months that are left.

They may be very close on both fronts and just need some money to kick the process off. I doubt that, otherwise they would have more to show off at this point.

Everyone has to start somewhere

@FLStyle said:

@Karkarov: You'll have to try harder than that to get an angry reaction out of me.

I am not trying to get any kind of reaction at all, I am just pointing out the reality that he started the thread that way and it is active. Something he did clearly worked or no one would have responded.

@jupham: I'm curious by what they mean when they say that have a prototype. The image of the console is quite clearly a 3D rendering. They do not appear to have a working controller. As far as I can tell, they have a dashboard and that's it. While it certainly looks slick (notwithstanding the various games displayed that apparently have not been confirmed for the system), I'm not sure that a slick dashboard is enough to constitute a "prototype".

@thirty_four said:

@jupham: I'm curious by what they mean when they say that have a prototype. The image of the console is quite clearly a 3D rendering. They do not appear to have a working controller. As far as I can tell, they have a dashboard and that's it. While it certainly looks slick (notwithstanding the various games displayed that apparently have not been confirmed for the system), I'm not sure that a slick dashboard is enough to constitute a "prototype".

A prototype is probably the internals of the final product or at least something close. It is more for making sure the system runs right and getting some software going before the final board layout and housing are finished

I want to bring back the converse react GEL shoes so I need to buy the rights from nike and money to start production/reverse engineer the react gel and some extra to pay larry johnson to be grandmama

I need 5 million in unmarked bills to make this happen send it all to my paypal account it is listed on my page.

I have been running this outfit for 4 days.

@JoeyRavn said:

The creator of this topic, @thirty_four, has posted only once before in Giant Bomb. He apparently became a member on July 12th, 2012. Discuss.

Is there any way to tell what date you created your account if you did so before quests? I forget.

@skyline7284 said:

I'm just going to leave this link here, and say that i completely agree with everything he says.

It's important to understand that a product like this scares a lot of people in the enthusiast press because it means that, successful or not, they will have to devote time, energy and money to cover it so some will express their business wariness in subtly biased ways to push people away from the idea, let alone the product. They may not even realise they are doing that in such a biased manner, but they are. 

I love watching business getting discussed by people who don't understand business

@GrantHeaslip said:

@Marokai said:

I'm sort of baffled by how hard some people are reaching in their determination to convince people, with basically no evidence whatsoever, that this is all some grand scam. I get the sense that there's this weird contingent of people motivated almost entirely by contrariness than anything else, set on just trying to make sure the Ouya is a complete failure. Skepticism is great and people should be demanding more and asking questions, but since the announcement of this thing on Kickstarter there seems to be two camps of people on this thing; The group excited to see how the Ouya might have legs and do things differently and are excited to have a new toy on the horizon, and a confederation of conspiracists, nihilists, and people who flew into a blind rage once they heard the word "Android."

@SeriouslyNow said:

@skyline7284 said:

I'm just going to leave this link here, and say that i completely agree with everything he says.

It's important to understand that a product like this scares a lot of people in the enthusiast press because it means that, successful or not, they will have to devote time, energy and money to cover it so some will express their business wariness in subtly biased ways to push people away from the idea, let alone the product. They may not even realise they are doing that in such a biased manner, but they are.

I think there's more truth to this than you realize, to be honest. Think back to the premise of the Ouya and how their initial pitch went. "Dedicated video game consoles are dying." There's a level of denial or panic to that idea in the gaming press because, as the line between video game box and general media box have been blurred, the role of the dedicated video game reviewer and reporter has been getting even more vestigial right along with it. Video game reviews as a general feature has been drifting more and more into the background of a website and video game coverage in general is fast becoming the sort of thing that is the additional section of a website, as opposed to the sole purpose of it. The new wave of the enthusiast press fashions themselves the sort of reporter that chases famous people down in conventions or has fantasies of working the red carpet. You're not going to get wide eyed fame reporting on a puny little indie machine. Populist rallying cries don't go over well anymore in a press that has delusions of grandeur that they'll get to pal around with the big boys. The press loves their paychecks and the Ouya is so far removed from that sort of lifestyle that any potential for that device's success becomes an obstacle in their own personal career path.

I don't think most of us think its a scam; we just suspect it's not going to succeed, and are miffed by the way they've marketed it by promising (or at least strongly implying) stuff that's very likely not going to come to fruition. Also, you've made a lot of sweeping, completely unsubstantiated claims (and essentially created a conspiracy theory of your own) while complaining about people not using evidence.

I don't have anything against Android, I don't like to watch things fail, and I don't think this is a scam. I just know enough to know that building an integrated software/hardware platform developers need to explicitly support is steep uphill battle, and one that a lot of companies with a lot more resources, talent, and experience fail at more often than not. I also know that their price point is extremely ambitious, especially since they're not making millions of these things.

Your definition of "I know" seems to be a lot looser than most. ;)

When I looked at the kickstarter, all I saw was: "New Console". Colored me unsurprised that it got funded so fast.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

Your definition of "I know" seems to be a lot looser than most. ;)

The statements I applied "I know" to (that making a platform is hard; that most fail at it; and that their price point is aggressive) are more-or-less factual. Maybe not "1+1=2" factual, but it's all conventional wisdom.

Technically 'most' succeed at it. The only real recorded failures in the marketplace were the 3DO, The Gizmondo, Game.com, The PSP Go and The Phantom. When you compare that to the staggering number of successes statistically the failures account for around 20%. 20% is not most. So, no, you didn't apply "I know" correctly, but loosely applied "I think I know but I really don't know much at all" and called it knowledge.

@Marokai: I realize that this post wasn't specifically directed at me, but rather at the general tenor of debate surrounding Ouya. I think it is unfair to characterize concerns about Ouya as either driven by paranoia, self-interest or an irrational vendetta against the new. I stated explicitly upthread that I do not believe that Ouya is a scam. I simply believe that the folks behind it are in over the heads, and do not have the wherewithal to deliver on the promises they make on their Kickstarter page.

For my part, my opinion on Ouya would be completely different if they weren't asking for money now. For the typical product, consumers have the benefit of the press having hands-on experience with that product before they are faced with a purchasing decision. In this case, the information consumers have is limited to the information released by the manufacturer itself. I realize that this phenomenon is typical with Kickstarter. But I feel safe in saying that Ouya is by far the most ambitious project ever announced on the platform. As such, I believe a higher level of scrutiny is warranted.

As for your last few points, I find them misplaced in this context. Save for the few reporters in the press who have actually gone to the trouble of asking questions, the press reaction to Ouya has been overwhelmingly positive. Furthermore, Ouya has gone to great lengths to associate its "puny little indie machine" with famous names. The name-dropping in the announcement video would make a Hollywood producer blush.

A $99, hackable console is a decent idea for the right kind of consumer. I'd love to see it succeed. But I'd hate to see thousands of sincere, idealistic gamers get burned.

If Ouya is a scam then the people attached to the project have effectively just ended their careers. I seriously doubt they would do that.

Still, I admit I'm skeptical about their ability to deliver, but I think they have a shot.

@GrantHeaslip: You used the word most, even 50% is not most. My 20% guestimated figure illustrates that you used the word 'most' utterly incorrectly, but hey take a swipe at it if you think that somehow makes your bastardisation of a basic English term acceptable. Most is a majority and the majority of game system startups do not have historically not failed. Now you're moving the goal posts to encompass all systems and yet we've only been talking about games systems because this discussion is a games system. So no, I don't take you seriously because, frankly, you're don't seem all that interested in seeing any other perspective aside from your own. You're even willing to bastardise terms and move goal posts to 'win' and that leaves little room for rational discussion to properly ensue.

Conventional wisdom would say that when faced with a person who won't engage rationally or fairly that the chances for a fair and rational discussion drop sharply.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@GrantHeaslip: You used the word most, even 50% is not most. My 20% guestimated figure illustrates that you used the word 'most' utterly incorrectly, but hey take a swipe at it if you think that somehow makes your bastardisation of a basic English term acceptable. Most is a majority and the majority of game system startups do not have historically not failed.

Actually, both "most" and "majority" mean 50%(+1). I should probably have used "majority", but whatever.

Now you're moving the goal posts to encompass all systems and yet we've only been talking about games systems because this discussion is a games system. So no, I don't take you seriously because, frankly, you're don't seem all that interested in seeing any other perspective aside from your own. You're even willing to bastardise terms and move goal posts to 'win' and that leaves little room for rational discussion to properly ensue.

Conventional wisdom would say that when faced with a person who won't engage rationally or fairly that the chances for a fair and rational discussion drop sharply.

That's some serious bullshit: accusing me of committing a logical fallacy, using that to propel yourself into faux righteous indignation, then saying you can't possibly debate with the horrible straw-man you just turned me into (hint, that's me accusing you of committing a logical fallacy). All without actually engaging with any of my arguments.

(This is my last post in this thread -- this isn't going anywhere good.)

Most means greater than 50% not equal to 50%. In any case the failure rate of gaming systems isn't 50% or even close to that number. Most is therefore wrong. You then tried to broaden the field to encompass all systems in general, hoping to pick up more failures to bolster your shitty argument to justify your incorrect usage of the word most. All in service of denigrating what is unarguably a really successful Kickstarter.

Poor and shameless.

In all honesty and without sarcasm, I'm surprised that Ouya made it as long as they did. This is usually the last pit-stop before bankruptcy. I doubt anyone is going to save them at this late hour.

I'm sure there are articles out there already that recount Ouya's many missteps over the last few years, so I don't feel the need to restate those here. I remain of the opinion that they misjudged the barrier to entry in the console gaming market, particularly as it relates to making a case to established developers to create for your console. And like many Silicon Valley upstarts, I suspect that this was a situation where Boxer8 was eyeing a big-money exit from the start, in this case likely via a sale to an established gaming company. Perhaps without that distraction, a smaller, more focused approach would have resulted in a company and a console that could survive for more than two and a half years.

But none of that should take away from what they accomplished. I said in this thread over two and a half years ago that I didn't think they were a scam -- they weren't. And, despite my deep reservations, backers actually received an honest-to-goodness $100 console, albeit perhaps a little later than expected. At the time that sounded like a pipe dream to many. Their successes were most obvious in games like TowerFall. But more than that, perhaps some small part of the seriousness with which Microsoft, and especially Sony, are now treating independent games can be attributed to Ouya and Boxer8 championing smaller developers.

I never owned one, but I'd be curious how many Ouya owners, particularly those who backed the Kickstarter, feel like they at least broke even on the transaction.

I bought one when it went for $50 on Amazon and it's pretty much entirely been used sat using XMBC as a way to get stuff to TV without constantly plugging in laptop etc.... I've not paid a single penny for a game played some free to play stuff. Maybe I'm part of the problem.