Congrats to everyone on the team for shipping this.
You guys are missing the point with the content argument. Developing for consoles has generally been a ridiculously expensive endeavor. This breaks that mold. Also what makes you think that someone won't buy a console just to play one (really good) game?
Developing for consoles has generally been a ridiculously expensive endeavor. This breaks that mold.
No, it doesn't. This shows that you can do some consumer facing and software development around an outdated commodity platform and release it. That is nontrivial and the Ouya team certainly deserves credit for it, but it is not on the same level as what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do to produce their consoles. And it shows in the final product.
Also what makes you think that someone won't buy a console just to play one (really good) game?
I feel like you're wishcasting, which seems to be commonplace in Ouya discussions. What "really good" game is going to be a killer app for Ouya? The platform has very small reach and I can't see anyone with a truly promising title making it an Ouya exclusive.
That's a good point, but if that's the way their product ends up being used, the company is looking at a rough road. Obviously I have no privileged information on their operations, but the BOM for their console is not leaving much in the way of a profit margin on hardware. So I have to think they're banking on people buying games and making their bones off of that. If people use the machines just as emulator boxes, I would bet that the Ouya folks have cause for alarm.
They're giving away the razor here, and their blades aren't better than anyone else's.
That's great, but emulators don't pay the bills. (Which, to be honest, I'm glad for; making their bones off pirating other people's work would be pretty gross.)
XBox Live Arcade. Nintendo's Virtual Console service. Re-releases on the GBA/DS/3DS. Not all games can be purchased this way and there is certainly a moral argument towards emulation to playing games that don't have such re-releases or were never released in an accessible market at all, but it is an observation that the ones people want to play can generally be acquired in this manner--your Chrono Triggers, your Final Fantasies, your Marios.
There's little defense for emulating the majority of games people actually emulate older consoles to play, aside from "I want it for free and no one will stop me."
People actually emulate a ton of games not available on virtual console. In fact, emulation is a pretty popular way for people to play fan translations of games that were never released in english (tales of phantasia, radical dreamers, etc.).
It's true that there are plenty of folks who pirate chrono trigger via emulation but there are also plenty who want to play the more obscure titles out there.
I am aware, but I noted a defensibility for those cases, didn't I? I am, however, skeptical of any claim (not that you are making one, but such a claim in general) that they are a majority, or even significant minority, of the set of people who download and use emulators.
It is worth noting that re-releases are coordinated by the copyright owner. Trademarks are not relevant here. It's also worth noting that most of the games you see that people actually want to play still have their copyrights held by relevant parties. Square-Enix re-releases the Final Fantasy series--and they still own it. Street Fighter or Mega Man re-releases? Capcom still owns it. Super Mario Brothers? Nintendo owns it. Phantasy Star? Sega still owns it.
Most of the games where copyright has bounced around are quite abandoned and not resold at all; in the "abandonware" situation I'd be much more receptive to the idea of emulation to play them. But those are generally not the games that most people pick up emulators to play.
Trademark should have been Copyright, you're correct.
However, the creator of Megaman is no longer at Capcom, the creator of Final Fantasy is no longer at Square, Sega is no longer Sega, but owned by Sammy.
That dodge? Really? "Oh, the single lone sprightly soul no longer draws a paycheck from them! Woe, woe, they deserve nothing! Take it for free!"
The companies that bankrolled the entire thing are still there (or--shocker--have been subsumed into another company, which spent money to acquire its assets). Your excuses are poor ones designed to paper over that you want something for free and can take it so you will. At least the guy who says "fuck 'em, I can take it and nobody will stop me" is honest.
Not in the sense that I mean, sorry. The Ouya is barely more than a Tegra 3 reference board with some furniture around it. The internals of the Wii are custom to the Wii, and that's orders of magnitude more daunting of a project.
Which does not mean that the Ouya cannot be good. (Basic microeconomics has a lot more to say on that topic.) But breathless cheering about this project "shattering the mold" doesn't really reflect reality.
I find that extremely unlikely, because the Ouya is a parasite platform--it exists to suck up ports from other platforms (chiefly Android phones and tablets). This makes it very easy to port away from as well, and I find it much more likely that any game with significant potential is ported away from Ouya as soon as possible to reach a platform with more extant users--removing the drive to purchase an Ouya at all.
It is a problematic situation for Ouya, because they have no compelling reason to stay on the platform once you sniff the slightest success.
I agree, at best for game devs the Ouya will be a test market for games before they are ported to other consoles.
The only place it might have an advantage will be for games that allow third party modding. Games with a side market for community DLC could be an interesting idea.
Android games are (so far) touch-oriented, whereas the Ouya has a console controller with analog sticks and triggers, shoulder buttons, d-pad, etc. It may be easy enough to port Android games to the Ouya, but it's also easy to make a game that doesn't port back well.
I think he means games being ported to another controller based platform like the Xbox.
If you are an indie dev who releases a game for the Ouya and gets some respectable sales you are quickly going to do the math on how many more sales you would get from a Xbox/PS version. As a result consumers are more likely to think "Oh, an Ouya game. I'll just wait 3 months for it to show up on Xbox".
Sure, that's true. Now the bigger question: who'd bother writing those games primarily-for-Ouya in the first place? You've got Windows PCs right over there, Macs and Linux PCs accessible without too much more work, and if you play your cards right, you can even deploy to the 360 (yeah, XNA's EOL'd, but it's still viable for XBLIG, and that's a lot better of a controller-based platform than Ouya is).
In the rare, doubt-it'll-happen case of a hit game coming out first on Ouya, I would bet we'd see it on Steam, for cheaper, within six months--because porting will, by necessity, be That Easy.
Ouya could, depending on tech stack get a port in that situation (and I've considered it for my own project because I'll already have a gamepad API for the Windows/Mac release), but it will never be a leading platform that people actively target because the market share is infinitesmal. There are too many better options in front of it.
EDIT: Also, bear in mind that Ouya isn't doing anything groundbreaking with their gamepad stuff - the gamepad APIs already exist in Android 4.x. The only Ouya-specific stuff I have seen is in their purchasing layer.
PC's are not very living room friendly, cost more than $100, and don't come with console controllers. 360's are more expensive to develop for, are prohibitively expensive to push frequent updates to, and are heavily censored. They also cost more than $100.
About half-true; the 360 is not expensive to develop for if you're doing XBLIG, which is probably the top speed of most of the "Ouya developers" I've seen out there. It is if you're an XBLA dev, but most of them are not. ("Censorship" is bizarre; I would hope we're not pushing RapeLay here.)
But it is purely a numbers game: if you've got a chance at 0.05% of Steam consumers you've blown away the 25% or even 50% of Ouya owners who might be interested in your game and it's not even close. And that means that nobody's going to write exclusives for Ouya and so the value prop for buying one, outside of a small perfectly-targeted segment that doesn't have a console and wants to play games in the living room and doesn't care about established franchises and is really really cheap, dies on the vine.
All it will take is one "Angry Birds" hit for 20 million people to snap one up in a month (or create huge demand and no supply), and suddenly it's the hot console, which is a pretty "compelling" reason.
It's not really about power though, it's more about exclusivity and uniqueness. For example, the Wii wasn't as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, but it had a unique control scheme, and exclusive games that took advantage of it at launch. No other platform offered even a remotely similar gameplay experience at the time. It has been said that some games were only possible on the PS3 (GoW 3). The Xbox 360 is best experienced with Xbox Live, which leaves other console gaming networks in the dust. The upcoming Steam Box will have Steam.
For the Ouya to "smoke" other consoles in sales, it will have to offer something unique, and that looks like a really tall order at this point.
The N64 particularly was pushing the envelope for consumer hardware at release and both the NES and SNES were quite advanced for their time (though their USA releases lagged quite a bit behind the Japanese/Famicom releases, which means at the time of US release they weren't quite as impressive).
They certainly stopped focusing on advanced hardware (in the raw CPU-power sense) post-N64 though.
NES and SNES were underpowered for the time compared to home computers, which most people didn't care about, which is why they succeeded.
N64 was a bit more modern, you're correct, because they went with the SGI/MIPS, but I was distracted from Mario 64 by GLQuake 16 player LAN deathmatches, so..
I disagree that they were under-powered compared to home computers, at least for their intended purposes of playing arcade-style videogames. The computers of the time by and large didn't have the sort of dedicated tilemap-scrolling hardware that allowed those systems to run arcade-style games so smoothly.
It wasn't until Commander Keen (circa 1990) that PC systems were capable of doing these sorts of games justice (and then just barely) and the videocard you used in such a system would cost significantly more than an entire NES/SNES console.
Of course there are other systems like the Amiga (my first two systems were a C64 and then later an Amiga 500) and the Atari ST that did have more game-friendly hardware but they were also nowhere close in terms of price range to the consoles and while more game-friendly than PCs still never quite achieved the pure tilemap-scrolling bliss of the dedicated consoles.
Of course, after the explosion of 3D graphics with the Rendition and the original Voodoo, PCs took off in terms of raw gaming power and have left console systems in the dust since, but it wasn't always that way.
Idk that I would agree with "low end commodity hardware", when almost every one of the consoles Nintendo has released has been completely revolutionary. This has been the case many times.
But this is besides the point, ask anyone what sells nintendo consoles, its not the consoles. Its the amazing 1st party games.
I am thoroughly disappointed by this project. Part of the vision was to offer console gaming, but with a weak GPU and highly latency IO it is impossible to write any games that resemble the quality of a console game.
Unlike the Wii there is no compensating feature like motion sensing. Additionally this makes it impossible to write games such as the Just Dance, which are extremely popular with casual audiences.
Ultimately, I think Ouya compromised by pushing a technically simpler and underpowered design. This will bite them when they realize that nobody will write real games for a platform that can't handle it.
It is not clear why anybody would want a $100 console that plays no real games when they can get a $150 Wii.
Me too. My real pet peeve with the PC/Multimedia world is that I can't watch TV on anything other than Windows Media Center- all the channels coming through my cable connection are locked.
It's fantastically annoying, because MythTV+XBMC would be a perfect TV watching solution. As it is, my best option for a set top box is to buy an Xbox 360, and I don't particularly feel like doing that.
I'm running xbmc on my Pi (the old one, not the shiny 512 MB version) and it's generally fine. The UI is decent enough (I'm told that fancy themes wouldn't work?) and my biggest concern is the time it takes to start a movie/music file over the network, something that the Pi's not responsible for..
I was at a developer meet the other week and someone from Ouya said they have been giving the XMBC team support and it is apparently working pretty well on the device.
On the other hand, developing for this is a lot cheaper than the PS3 and 360. Much of its software is going to be ports of Android phone games, so developer adoption isn't the huge hurdle that it's been on other new ecosystems.
The mobile appstores are so saturated that it's impossible to get noticed, at least at the start that will make Ouya attractive to developers even if it has a smaller customer base.
But most of the Android games are optimized for mobile and touch. It's like having a 400K sportscar with a 55mph speed limiter. The capability is there, but then there's nothing that really takes advantage of it. What value would developers find in porting their games to the Ouya? Not much, I suppose, unless there's a saturated market. Companies like Rovio and the guys who made Temple Run can afford it, but the small-time devs like Andreas Illiger may not see much of a market with the Ouya.
Don't get me wrong, I would buy one of these anyway, but I just hope to see some developers hop onto it, which seems unlikely at this point.
I think there are quite a lot of those games that have virtual buttons on top, and those can be easily ported to the console. Many of them are RPG's or MMORPG's, which use the same free-2-play model OUYA is interested in, and are actually some of the top grossing games on Android.
The ones that really depend on touch wouldn't work well, but there are plenty (especially shooters and RPGs) that try to duplicate twin-stick controls on to a touchscreen. Those are the games that will make sense to port.
IIRC the controller has a touchpad (not a touchscreen) in the middle, but I have no idea what anyone's going to do with it.
Notch: "See, the problem with Minecraft for the Ouya is that it's android, and our android version of Minecraft isn't exactly that super great."
They've been working on it, but it still doesn't compare well to the PC version, or even the Xbox release. People are willing to accept a bit of a gimped version of their phone, because it's running on their phone. On a console (even one that costs less than a phone did) I think they'll have some trouble overcoming that.
It could happen, but a proper version of Minecraft for Ouya would take some effort. If they get enough adoption for Mojang to bother, that could be the tipping point that pushes it to popularity.
That's surprising. Wasn't Minecraft made in Java? You'd think the Android version would work best (after the PC one of course). Sounds to me like they just didn't care that much about the Android version.
Desktop CPUs are something like 10 times faster than the typical ARM mobile CPU. Plus a desktop would run the higher optimized JVM instead of Dalvik. I'm sure it is challenging to get Minecraft to run at a playable level of performance on mobile hardware, let alone drive HD resolutions.
> I'm sure it is challenging to get Minecraft to run at a playable level of performance on mobile hardware, let alone drive HD resolutions.
While there's a lot of Minecraft that's certainly CPU-bound, rendering at higher resolutions has next to nothing to do with CPU speed. The bulk of your rendering work is done by the GPU, and the GPU in Ouya is more than capable of rendering Minecraft at HD resolutions.
At the time, it was severely behind the PC version on features. It's still lagging, but it's been catching up. The biggest things are that that worlds are limited to a very small size and it's missing the two extra dimensions. I wouldn't be surprised if those features made it in for an Ouya release.
> This platform will grow like crazy, because the tools are open source, and Android is a very strong brand.
"Grow like crazy" seems a little optimistic. Android has grown in large part because it dominates carrier showrooms, where most "normal" people buy their phones. I also wouldn't call it a strong brand, and you may have noticed that "Android" is mentioned much less in advertising, with companies now advertising their brands (e.g., Samsung Galaxy) more often than not.
The OUYA is also under-powered - a Tegra 3 is already old tech. Mobile tech, which the OUYA is built on, is growing much too quickly for this thing to gain much traction.
One obvious way to help jump start this process is making it easy to bring games over from android phones. These won't be nice HD games but they may spark some interest. Also it may appeal to those who buy playstations and xboxes primarily as media centers but also want to do some light gaming.
I'm rooting for it but you're right about the main challenges. Let's hope they can solve them.
Most games should be fine in 720p on Tegra 3. Still wish they used a more powerful chip for a mid-2013 public launch, though. But maybe they can catch-up for version 2.
I think you are right and it's not a big problem; there are enough geeks who do not get excited by the latest non-gameplay-but-great-graphics-fps (I rather play something like http://www.anodynegame.com/ any day). If that's enough mass to continue this console is the question. For geeks this thing is great; it looks good, it is small and cheap. I bought it via Kickstarter and I'll buy a few more, just to play with and make games on.
Your comment kinda has the answer in it: it's a niche. It doesn't have to fight with the likings of M$, Sony or Nintendo. If the they manage to find a "blue ocean", somewhere between the big boys, they are all set. There should be tons of not so casual players out there, that enjoy creative and witty games, e.g. most of these Indie games with a wow-factor.
I'm definitely happy they're building that in, rather than having two versions of every game like people tend to on the App Store. It's a bit of a mess on account of that.
I wouldn't expect it to. I don't see how anyone can expect it to compete with the major consoles. It won't (not to say it can't, just that it simply won't) run any huge AAA game titles, so it's completely irrelevant on that level.
I think it sits in its own niche. Budget gaming. A competitor for Nintendo's offering, perhaps. But certainly not a competitor for either Microsoft's or Sony's offering.
I think you're more likely to own an Ouya or both it and a "major" console. It would not replace them.
I backed Ouya because the idea of being able to "easily" publish the same app on phones and a console was too good to pass up. I'm just a Computer Science student tinkering with Android development in my spare time, and I can publish a game for a console. That's pretty amazing.
My day job is working on an Android application with audio recording and I write games in my spare time, so I've had occasion to look at this. Android's audio environment is end-to-end poor, especially compared to iOS. The native APIs are pretty crude, there's bizarre latency all over the place, and the Java APIs are badly designed, poorly documented, and have absolutely insane failure modes.
Right now, I would recommend iOS (and I don't do that much) for anyone who is serious about audio programming on portable devices.
A game jam with a $99 entry fee. Imagine me making a really loud, really dismissive noise for about 3 minutes.
But yeah, that does seem to be their objective. Hopefully they get their stuff together and put out a solid SDK and set of dev tools and simulator (their current release is at least a start).
If you downvoted me because you object to my complaint about the entry fee, allow me to educate you. If you downvoted me because you think Ouya is awesome or you own Ouya shares, more power to you.
Anyway, a company like Ouya co-opting the game jam phenomenon (not to mention the term) for pure commercial, money-making greedy purposes is offensive. Allow me to explain in detail:
The events normally associated with the term Game Jam are:
a) free
b) not about prizes or competition
c) intentionally inclusive
For a few examples, just google 'game jam', or check out these pages:
The whole spirit and philosophy behind game jams is to encourage anyone and everyone to creatively participate in the creation of video games, regardless of commercial viability, tools used, race, gender, age, or creed.
In comparison, the Ouya game jam:
a) Required a $99 purchase of an Ouya console to enter - EVEN THOUGH - Ouya is supposedly an Android based platform and any functioning Android game should be able to run on the Ouya.
b) Included prizes and judges being handed out at the discretion of Ouya and/or Kill Screen
c) Required all games to be Ouya games, not Android games or simply 'games that can run on the Ouya'.
These are not minor distinctions. This is important. This is a corporation feeding off the efforts of the community without giving anything back (unless you count the pittance of a few prizes to be handed out to the 'winners').
The Ouya 'game jam' is a contest. And I have no problem with contests: They are a good way to promote interest in your platform. Microsoft ran multiple successful contests for XBox Live Indie Games called 'Dream Build Play' that produced lots of great games.
> a) Required a $99 purchase of an Ouya console to enter - EVEN THOUGH - Ouya is supposedly an Android based platform and any functioning Android game should be able to run on the Ouya.
The Ouya runs an additional API that provides a game menu similar to that of the Playstation's XMB or the XBox 360's Guide, as well as support for its controllers and hardware-specific features. Games for Ouya need to be able to support that API. Games not targeted directly to Ouya may not be able to adequately support the controllers and hardware.
(I do not have a dev kit, so I don't know the specifics.)
I'm actually pretty excited about the Ouya as an emulation platform.
In a similar thrust, those here who think that because it's an open and easy to develop for platform don't remember the lackluster sales of many prior platforms that lead into the market with emulation (which gave them huge libraries).
Most of the non-emulator software was quite frankly, lackluster. Those consoles counted their sales in the tens of thousands of units, not in the millions.
Will Game Stick be far behind? I think both are viable platforms. Actually, I'm not sure "platform" is the right word there since they both run Android.
$100 for games, XBMC, plex, pre ordered. Will probably get Netflix on there too right? Nice little media center and controller with the bonus of multiplayer games. So worth it.
You guys are missing the point with the content argument. Developing for consoles has generally been a ridiculously expensive endeavor. This breaks that mold. Also what makes you think that someone won't buy a console just to play one (really good) game?