I dunno man... this week's TNT was pure gold because of what happened from the time they busted out the OUYA to the end.

I didn't know they showed the Ouya on giantbomb...

I'm interested in it as an emulation machine for my living room. I've got so many old consoles laying around, it'd be cool to be able to access all my old games from one place and play em on the couch.

...is that still a thing the Ouya can do? I haven't been following it too closely.

Well, to be fair, a PC can do everything every other console can do too...

It doesn't innovate, but it does provide these things you're saying at a cheaper price point.

I don't know of any PC I can get with an HDMI out, with an OS optimized for controller and large display, that is also open to the point where I can easily load it up with emulators and ROMs.

I mean, I'd love to break out my NES / SNES to play some classics, but this will be a lot easier to manage. I'll also soon be able to upload some staged images to Facebook of my 17 month old playing Super Mario Bros. or something, so that's awesome.

The stuff on the TNT did not paint the Ouya in anything resembling a good light. It looks cheap, ugly, slow, and third-rate to the end, and was commented on as such by the Giantbomb crew.

I won't say that it isn't kind of a shame, but if a Kickstarter could create a comparable experience to one of the three big gaming machines (not to mention PC), then we would have a bunch of new, cheap consoles pouring out everywhere. That would not be a good thing at all.

Oh they sure did... they sure did.

True, but the 360, wii, and ps3 has things that are going for it. As for the Ouya it doesn't seem to have much to offer.

From what I've seen it can run old console games such as snes,psx, sega, n64 and others.

This is why I was excited also (Except for the 17 month old part. Children smell funny and are always kind of sticky.), but now I'm starting to doubt if it can even pull off the emulation thing semi-reliably.

I think a really bad thing about it is the price at least here in the UK can't say what its like for the rest of Europe, In the US it retails for $99 and in the uk its selling for £99 yeah 99 dollars does not equal 99 pound OUYA makers witch the money you made on kickstarter I though you would at least be able to do basic maths.

Theoretically a Raspberry Pi could do the same things, right? Assuming there're linux versions of the emulators. And that thing's only $25 for a the barebones board. It probably wouldn't handle emulation quite as well, but I'm not sure.

I think it would be interesting to get, whether its actually practical and/or fun or not. Albeit that doesn't paint a good light for consumerism, but I rationalize it that it is so bad it is good kinda thing.

I think the Ouya is cool for what it is. Of course a PC can do everything an Ouya can, but that is not the idea. The Ouya is a way for developers to get their game on a console, without spending the absurd wad of cash getting it on console.

Also for what it's worth the Ouya is really inexpensive. Most phones and tablets with those specs run upwards of $200 and up, and the Ouya is only $100. Not to mention every game is free in some way so you get a lot of value with that little box.

Stop taking such a radical stance!

Ouya is gonna change video gamez man. Death of the traditional console. Redefine the way you experience games in the home. Some of the ridiculous superlatives surrounding the announcement of this thing. Kind of funny, though not overly surprising, that it turned out to be junk.

@oldenglishc: The representation of the Ouya on TNT was poor and misrepresentative, due to latency and other issues caused by their capture set up.

That being said, there is a ton of crap on the store that isn't terribly great.

However, stuff like Knightmare Tower, YDKJ (which is the full console version of YDKJ, not the weird Android/iPad version), Polarity, and The Ball are quite good and play fine.

As far as emulation, it has EMU.nes and GSNES, both of which work perfectly. EMUya is kind of terrible just because of how it charges for cheats, and it doesn't have options on its filters. EMU.nes, GSNES, Mupen64, and FPSE seem to all work at full speed with no frame skip, so if you're looking for an emulation box, it should be fine. If you're looking for a multimedia box, XMBC's beta release with hardware acceleration works great, and allows for 1080p video to be streamed or played locally. Plex works well, too.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think the GB guys are really at fault here. They got a piece of hardware that had to be hooked up differently for them, and the stuff Vinny and the crew had to do made it behave oddly. The Ouya is not a perfect system by any means, but it is probably the best $100 way to play some interesting stuff, as well as have a decent Netflix/XMBC/Plex machine that also plays emulation.

@eujin: That's good to hear, a Roku replacement that also plays some emulation is exactly what I was looking forward to. Since it seems like you've got your hands on one, does it have a flash plug-in for the browser or do you have to run the videos thru Plex?

@dietomaha said:

This, which is probably an admission that I'm interested in the console for completely the wrong reasons. May also be able to do this with Raspberry Pi?

Yep. It can for crazy cheap.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192

I dunno. It is only $100, which is kinda cheap to be able to access a ton of cool Android games, most of which are below $6 themselves.

But it does kind of bug me that the Tegra 3 processor they decided to go with in the Ouya is already outdated. And that the interface is clunky. It also bums me out that a lot of people seem to think that Android games are stupid. A lot of them are, but there are plenty of great games in the mix.

Christ, everytime I see Ouya, I can't help but say it like Macho Man....OOOOOOUUUuuuuuyyaaa

Wait... You mean a crowd-founded Android video game console turns out to be bad ? Oh nooooOOOoOoOOooOoooo ! My life is falling apart ! What is the world becoming ? I don't know what video games are anymore.

More seriously, I never thought the Ouya was anything else than a waste of time the moment I read their Kickstarter page.

@oldenglishc: Yes and no. You can sideload the last released flash APK and Firefox for Android, and it will work. However, Flash for Android has stopped being developed, so it'll likely not work for much longer.

I prefer using XMBC and Plex for stuff anyway, as you'll get cleaner video.

Ouya its been a terrible idea from the start. It does probes people can be easily blinded to trow money at sketchy proposals with flashy videos.

@eujin: I appreciate the info.

A waste of time? It seems like ass.

@falserelic: "I'm sure the majority of people don't know the console is out or exist."

Well as a matter of fact it isn't out, as was also mentioned on the show, the Ouya launch date is June 25.

I can't help thinking of Microsoft's conference before E3, and how they pitched it as an all in one media center, just right for just about everyone, also for people who doesn't really care much about games. This just doesn't seem likely - would someone who doesn't really care about games really pay $500 for a media center? The Ouya seems like a much better prospect in this context, especially for anyone with a bit of retro nostalgia.

The things that seems attractive to me about the Ouya are:

• The ability for developers to self publish games and in relation the possibility for some really cool indie games.
• It is running Linux and is a very open system meaning you can use it exactly the way you want.
• The Package - the Ouya is around the size of a Rubiks cube.
• Emulators.
• Price point.

When this is said, I'm still probably not buying one, at least in this incarnation, as the hardware seems slightly too weak. Also the controller just doesn't seem good enough. If they are going to sell it without controller at some point, I might still buy one.

Also Broken Age is a console exclusive for Ouya, at least a timed one I think.

I own one, it's ... I don't know how to turn it off, so it's pretty much running constantly. And... uh... you're not wrong.

Once I can get Youtube and XBMC and various other stuff going with it, then yeah, I'm glad I have it. Because the media streaming solutions for the 360/PS3 sucks dinks and so does their Youtube apps. Especially on the 360, it's like it's trying to load Crysis.

@brodehouse: There's an option at the main menu for "Power Off". You can also hold down the power button and it'll ask if you want to shut down. I think it does go into a sleep mode though by just tapping the power button. the fan will run (if it has even turned on, it only does at a certain heat threshold) for a few more minutes then power off. It then will wake up upon pressing the power button again.

(Quick Question if you want to reply)

So far what's your thoughts on the Ouya overall?

Have a buddy who built a Pi and he plays up to PS1 games on it just fine. He says the PS1 stuff can sometimes get a little funky due to drivers and what not, but previous generation is great.

@eujin: That's... ripping the cord is more time effective. But meh, I'm not hurting for electricity.

Pretty low. The only thing I enjoy playing on it is one of the runner games, which has left such an impression that I can't bring its name to mind (it's probably Canabalt though). That said, I bought it mostly for emulation, streaming and trying out people's weird homebrew stuff, and that shit is only starting to come available now after launch.

It's a cheaper console, so it has some merit. I think right now the problem it doesn't have a system seller and the problems that reviewers have seen it with are pretty bad.

If they can get that stuff ironed out and get some games worth buying it for I think it could do fine, theoretically. The controller doesn't seem worth it but supposedly you can use an XBOX controller for it so whatevs.

Time will tell. It's not as interesting or exciting to me as Occulus Rift, though. At least Occulus Rift is attempting something new, but again Ouya is a cheap console and thats not a bad thing either- never been that big on the specs of that thing but it could be alright with some decent games and the issues fixed.

It doesn't have a raison d'etre, there is no unifying "thing" that really justifies it's existence, it's a really awesome technological experiment. A decent, open console for a Benjamin. That's a good deal -if- there's something to do with it.

It's so cheap that I could see a lot of people getting one just because. I'm just waiting for them to work out some of the kinks I heard about like lag, and to hear confirmation that someone got a ps3 controller working on that thing.

If Ouya was able to run ps2 and xbox emulators. Then it definitely would have caught my attention, but I'm sure Sony and Microsoft wouldn't let them go that far. On top of that the Ouya probably wouldn't be able to handle those emulators well.

I had to post this. This is just fantastic.

I'd get it only to put emulators on it. But if I ever wanted to play them I'd probably just load em up on my PC and ignore my OUYA.

so far i've gathered that it's either a complete waste of time or the 2nd coming of christ to indie developers.

gotta love extremes.

My friend's brother ordered one for some reason. I really don't know why. The interface sucks, the controllers are awkward to handle and have a strange button layout, and it's simply not powerful enough to do half the things people probably imagine they can do with it. The other half could be better played on other platforms. If you want to play old games, get a Raspberry Pi. If you want to mod your games, you can do that on a PC. If you want to play Android games, use another Android device that you probably already own. If you want this on a TV, well, Ouya is not the device the day 1 hype suggested. It's simply not powerful enough.

It's a powerful idea that, sadly, is not ready for prime time. I don't know what the developers' standpoints are on this thing, but as a gamer the Ouya is not worth it.

I think it'll be cool for what the modding community does with it, rather than the Ouya ports of iPhone and Android games.

@demoskinos: Made me laugh when he showed that "thanks for believing" sign. I hope they start showing some worth while games for the Ouya, or else people are going to be upset. So far it seem like the Ouya is on a bad start.

This.

OUYA isn't going to be a mainstream system, and it's not trying to be. It's another cheap multimedia streaming device that can play emulators and has some interesting Android games, and it'll have its own niche.

Actually, does the system offer any emulators for TurboGrafx or Sega consoles? PSOne? All these ought to be possible on the hardware...

Any way to play GB videos on Ouya?

@yukoasho: PCE.Emu is available for TG16, FPSE is available for PSX. Both appear to operate at full speed, but FPSE requires some finagling. It can read direct ISO though, so you can rip your discs directly in Windows 7 and just copy them to the ouya to play.

@tracerace11: XBMC or Plex both have addons for Giantbomb

Well then, don't get it.

While I am pro-OUYA, I still like to wait some time before making a judgment; obviously it's a work in progress, but I have high hopes for the future of OUYA. If the console itself dies off, perhaps something else will takes its place that becomes more mainstream.

I feel like it could still be a good deal if their first hardware revision really cleans a bunch of stuff up. As it stands, I don't have one of those dumb fancy phones for playing iphone/android games, and if I could just play that crap on my TV with a cheap device, then that would be great. But as it stands, I don't think the Ouya is something I would want to spend my money on right now.

@demoskinos: Thank you for making my day!