OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

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Ionait
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OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#1 Post by Ionait »

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouy ... me-console

^ All of the information is on their kickstarter.
OUYA is a new game console for the TV, powered by Android.

We've packed this little box full of power. Developers will have access to OUYA's open design so they can produce their games for the living room, taking advantage of everything the TV has to offer.

Best of all, OUYA's world-class controller, console, and interface come in one beautiful, inexpensive package. All the games on it will be free, at least to try.


This is pretty exciting, possibly for Renpy games too. For 99 USD you get the console, a controller, and a development kit. They encourage you to hack it, mod it, create your own peripherals for it.

I don't know if this project is a sure thing, nothing is in life, right? But I can't help but be excited about the possibilities something like this offers.

What do you all think? Could you see some of our best Renpy-created games on this console, on your TV?

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#2 Post by Victoria Jennings »

Dude, OMIGOSH! dkslfjsdklfjdf ; v ; ♥♥♥

This looks AWESOME. Agh, I'm freaking out! kfjkls *can't think of anything to say*

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#3 Post by kaleidofish »

Looks cool. Not sure if I'd buy it, though. With an HDMI cord and a wireless mouse/keyboard, I can already play Ren'py games on my TV (and have), so I wouldn't get it just for Ren'py games, but other mobile-exclusive games would be interesting to see. If I ever port any of my visual novels to Android, I may look into getting them on OUYA's marketplace.
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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#4 Post by LVUER »

Looks cool... but I still prefer PC/laptop, and they're could be cheaper anyway... Tablet is also more compact than TV and a console (and cheaper too). More over, I don't even know if this will be really finished (as the rest of kickstarter project). But that's just me...
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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#5 Post by Ionait »

kaleidofish: You make a good point, and one that gets made about Ouya a lot it seems. Ouya's thing is getting people "back to the TV", at least their little commercial blurb says as much but PC gamers can get back to the TV too whenever they want usually.

And it seems the draw for gamers mostly is having something that COULD (not saying it will, it's an odd chance) tip the balance in the games industry by having something popular with a wealth of indie games and other games from smaller developers so the AAA game industry pros will finally step it up, stop making sequels, and come out with more satisfying original games. That's something I'm pretty excited about. (Don't know if that paragraph made sense or is grammatically correct but I am sleepy.)

LVUER: I think it has to be finished at this point, or all of the money will have to be returned. They are over 200k USD over their target which means they have to, by KickStarter rules, actually go through with their promises.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#6 Post by netravelr »

Yeah, I put my $99 in, let's hope they deliver something awesome from it. Unity is a partner and as I've been experimenting with Unity as an engine recently, the games shouldn't be too difficult to port over there, but we'll see.
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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#7 Post by DrakeNavarone »

It's a really neat idea, for sure, but I think that's exactly what is being capitalized on. You should consider donating to this one only with a healthy dose of skepticism. As much as I'd love to see this thing work, Ben Kuchera of PA Report wrote a pretty telling article about all the problems areas with the public approach this Kickstarter has had. Now, there isn't enough there to completely write it off from happening, but I do think they are overreaching with their promises a little bit. And certainly the short deadline is cause for immediate concern.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#8 Post by PyTom »

The thing is - what they're trying to do isn't all that hard.

What they're doing is taking a Tegra 3 development board, maybe changing the form factor a bit and removing some of the weirder hardware, putting it into a stylish box, developing a controller for it, and developing an app store for it. There aren't any breakthroughs that would be involved in making this.

I'm guessing the controller is just a shell over existing bluetooth controller logic. So that's not going to be all that hard to develop, either. They also have to arrange with Nvidia et-al to procure the parts, and to send them over to china for manufacture, and on.

There isn't really anything groundbreaking about the hardware and software side of this. It's about equivalent in difficulty to developing a reasonably modern tablet or smartphone - and they have over 6 months to do that in. A project I'm doing at work - not in the games field - will develop a similar piece of hardware, and the plan is to have 5 or so people work for a year on it.

I suspect that $99 is an intro price, and that the final unit will be a bit more than that. ($149 is my wild-ass guess.)

The downside is that the OUYA isn't going to be a particularly good piece of hardware by the time it comes out. It'll benefit from not having to care about battery life, but it's fundamentally on par with one of today's high-end tablets - and maybe a 360/PS3 era console? - which will be even lower in the year it takes to germinate.

Of course, if it takes off, they can then use the market/ecosystem they created, and apply it to a new console every couple of years. And for $100-$150, people might go with that - it's a much easier pill to swallow than paying for consoles that, when new, cost a rent payment.
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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#9 Post by Counter Arts »

So here is a big question. Tegra 3 "Wayne" (as in Batman) will support Direct X11.1 (Xbox 360 only supports DirectX10.X). Would the OUYA have this? Maybe?
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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#10 Post by Ragtag »

This is a good idea and I hope they will succeed with it. Although I'm not too sure on what kind of games this console will deliver. I know they won't be pretty graphic-wise but in exchange for that, interesting gameplay.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#11 Post by MikeConway »

I went and backed this and got one of my own. I look forward to getting it in March.

What I'm wondering is this: will it need any special programming, or will the controller just have ways of emulating keyboard and mouse clicks. I know that there is a touchpad built into the thing, but even so. I guess we'll find out. I'm hoping to develop for it later.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#12 Post by AxemRed »

MikeConway wrote:I went and backed this and got one of my own. I look forward to getting it in March.

What I'm wondering is this: will it need any special programming, or will the controller just have ways of emulating keyboard and mouse clicks. I know that there is a touchpad built into the thing, but even so. I guess we'll find out. I'm hoping to develop for it later.
It runs Android, Android supports gamepads. I'd be very surprised if they actually ship on time, these kinds of projects are usually delayed by months/years.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#13 Post by DaFool »

It looks like a successful campaign to me.

Now I'm conflicted which will be the better user experience: physical buttons or multi-touch interaction.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#14 Post by Faze »

DaFool wrote:It looks like a successful campaign to me.

Now I'm conflicted which will be the better user experience: physical buttons or multi-touch interaction.
I'd say it depends on the game, and even then it wouldn't be a landslide one way or another. Different control schemes are sometimes simultaneously better and worse than its competition. For example, I think that for the most part Deus Ex: Human Revolution controls better with a joystick. You can move much better using the analogue stick than you can using the arrow keys on your keyboard. But at the same time, switching weapons with the joystick is a ridiculous pain because you have bring up a mini-menu that stops gameplay to do it, while you can just hit a key to switch weapons with your keyboard.

It's more or less the same thing for touch vs buttons, I think. Some strategy games can be pretty annoying on consoles, but they feel pretty natural when using the DS's touchscreen to slide across the map like it's a mouse. Touch based interfaces can feel really, really intuitive to the player in games like Angry Birds or hell, when you have to do something like inventory management in pretty much any game ever. But responsive as touch based commands might be, I think they just don't feel right for a fast paced game. It might be the fact I'm more used to physical buttons, but at the end of the day if you are playing a fighting game with a touch based interface you are pounding your fingers against hard glass. That's just generally not very pleasant. Plus depending on the device the virtual buttons could take up a huge part of the screen, which could be an issue.

So to sum up, I'd say it's a tossup. Depends on the type of game, what accessories it is shipping with(something to put over the touchscreen to make it more comfortable could work) and all that.

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Re: OUYA - The console for $99 that supports Android

#15 Post by dott.Piergiorgio »

well, currently is starting to became something, if his imperial majesty the Square is seriously working on it, up to the never-heard-before of a FF (albeit a re-relase) in the launch line-up.....

but what is interesting is the unusual openess for a console.

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