I find Ouya a lot less questionable as a Kickstarter project than PA using it as a fundraising platform for operating expenses, which no other company could get away with as far as I can tell.
I couldn't have put this better into words than you. I think they are convinced they deserve equal treatment to Wikipedia, since they are planning to do this on a yearly basis. Disappointing.
I really don't understand why they chose kickstarter, when they could've just put up a paypal donate option. Well, except perhaps that anything remotely cool on kickstarter gets written up everywhere.
I'd like to add one more thing as well, but don't want to go back and edit: I find that Ouya, by having a -functional- hardware prototype that serves most of the core features it will promise as a piece of hardware, is already well advanced beyond the state of most kickstarter projects. The most frustrating thing for me about kickstarter is how many projects are -conceptual- at the kickstarter phase.
I refuse to give someone money because they're unwilling to take the risk to build the first version of something with their own sweat, blood, and tears before begging for cash. Why should I pay you just because you have an idea? Show me that you can fully implement it. Better yet, show me that you're done and you just need to raise the cash to make it happen. There seems to be something in the start-up world these days that just having the idea and the merest inkling of how to achieve it should be all that it takes to get people to throw money at you.
If you build it first, there is a risk that Kickstarter will reject your application as seeking funding for business operations, rather than funding for a specific project.
This article is completely stupid. The whole point of Kickstarter is to sell a dream. 9 months (not 8) is plenty of time to get the pieces in place. And you know what? It'll probably slip a few months. Big deal. The entire article is chock full of FUD. Why not give the company a few weeks or months to make some visible progress before trying to squash the enthusiasm. Donators are only in for $99 so it's not like anyone's going bankrupt over it.
I don't think the article's intention is to convince people it's a con or crush the enthusiasm. Their points aren't illegitimate and their arguments are fair - isn't it prudent to criticise them and see how they respond rather than let them continue unchallenged, especially considering the collective financial contribution involved?
Considering that they already have prototypes together, they've already apparently got something to show. As the article points out there are flaws with what they're offering and questions that need answering.
I'm sure most of the questions and queries can be answered satisfactorily, but the crux is the lack of confirmed titles, which they can't fix themselves.
I think they should really have already got something cast iron in the pipeline from some reasonable sized developers (mojang for example) before they launched the kickstarter.
Has anyone ever released a console without at least a few games in the pipe? It never turns out well when there are very few games, but 9 months from release they don't have any games.
Saying that you could just develop for Windows (or even desktop Linux will have a bigger install base) if you desire openness is a very valid point, but there is one caveat.
This thing ships with a controller, people who are used to playing action type console games prefer to use a controller for pretty much every game type including FPS. Sure you can plug a joypad into a PC but in my experience this is a shockingly rare thing to find people doing "in the wild".
I have a feeling us on HN are sceptical of this device precisely because we want it to succeed in principle but have been burned so many times in the past by "magic open tech" that fails to live upto our expectations.
They might be able to flog some units in the emerging markets, but they better make sure they are making a profit on the hardware because 99% of those customers are not going to be buying legit games from your app store.
I have done the same, though for some strange reason my Xbox360 pad (an official one as far as I can tell) actually has a standard USB on the end and requires an adapter to plug into a 360.
The great thing is that pretty much every game on steam supports it and even recognises it as a 360 Pad so game tutorials will display the correct labels and colours for buttons. Works great under Linux too.
What surprises me though is the number of people to whom this ability is surprising "You're playing a PC game with a joypad? What? how?"
It's also surprising that even gaming specialist manufacturers like alienware don't offer joypads as an option when building a system.
Reminds me of The Phantom video game console from around a decade ago. That one also promised the universe, with PA declaring their skepticism back in 2003: http://penny-arcade.com/2003/01/22http://www.penny-arcade.com/2003/08/20/ (the links to the product no longer reference that device -- it never appeared)
There's nothing wrong with civilly expressing skepticism about overly-ambitious claims. This article seems to do a good job of doing just that.
It's tough to strike a balance between cheerleading and naysaying here. I've seen the word "scam" thrown around, as well as Roosevelt's bit about the man in the arena. Since Ouya is asking for your money, just take this as due diligence before pledging (or not).
The gaming community really likes jumping on hate bandwagons. I don't think it's productive to drive this brand into the ground before it has its chance.
The gaming community really likes jumping on hate bandwagons.
Big swaths of the tech world are like this as well. As a programmer of over 3 decades, I'm wondering if there's something about computer related tech fields that tends to promote unkind, amoral, and short-sighted outlooks on the world. Alternatively, there could be an attraction for the segment of the populace with unkind, amoral, and short-sighted outlooks on the world. Not everyone in tech is like that, of course, or I'd leave. (This is not to say the PA guys are like that.)
I wouldn't jump to say "unkind" and "amoral" but computer related tech fields do attract very analytical thinkers, who are often more critical than less analytical types.
What it really comes down to, is if you think (or hope) that Ouya will succeed, then give them some money on Kickstarter if you can afford it. If you do not want Ouya to succeed then don't. If you aren't sure, then wait until it hits production.
In the mean time, get back to work on your own projects and stop worrying so much about what other people are doing.
I was mostly concerned about the controller and how hard it is to get right. Why not just build it with compatibility with other console controllers, including the older 8 and 16 bit systems? This way they dont have to worry about the tricky (and costly) business of designing a controller from scratch-- its very easy to get it wrong, and I'd think video gamers are most comfortable with controllers they are used to.
You really need to have a standard controller for a console so that developers know what the hell they are developing for. If I design a game that relies on an analogue trigger and 6 buttons how do I deal with someone plugging a PS2 controller in, or a NES controller?
Don't most high-end Android phones these days allow you to connect to a TV via MHL adapter?
It seems like they would be better served (i.e., able to actually deliver a product at the price point they're pushing) by building a really awesome controller to play games on the phone you already own, and making an SDK to extend games to take advantage of it.
Have you ever seen anyone gather around a mobile phone connected to a TV for playing? The first step preventing that already is that people don't want to connect/disconnect hardware constantly.
I acknowledge some points in the article. It will probably be hard/impossible to make a living making games for this console alone. And I was also already wondering if they have any chance finishing the software in time when they are only starting now. But if they manage to release it in time for that price I wouldn't care much - for 99$ a console that's rootable - that alone sounds good enough for buying to me. Also I think his worries about porting the input of games for a controller are overblown, that's not exactly the hardest part when writing a game.
It depends on the game, but controls are a huge part of the game experience and many types of games are just fundamentally horrible to play on a particular set of controls. Bad controls will simply ruin a game. I remember the pain of playing Mortal Kombat on a keyboard for example, also bear in mind how long it took for consoles to make FPS games tolerable on a controller. This is worse than that, you might have some luck in porting a touchscreen game over to mouse control or vice versa, but touch control to gamepad?
How on earth would one play "cut the rope" on a controller?
I agree though that it might well be worth the $99 just for use as a media box and to play old arcade ROMs on but the question is whether that is a viable business model for them?
If it can do TV stuff, then it will be an overall better solution, and you won't have to deal with the hassle of connecting the cable to your TV and also a controller to the phone.
The Pandora can do all of the things Ouya dreams about (already has done it), has a working software eco-system, has an app-store in place, and heck .. the Pandora even has its own development tools onboard. All you need to develop for Pandora is available: on the Pandora.
So I think this Ouya thing is one thing altogether (Hype circle), but the Pandora .. its not getting the love it deserves. Honestly, I couldn't be more excited for a next-generation gaming platform architecture than I am for the Pandora ..
That thing is atrocious. I don't mind this whole "open" movement, but that hardware is just not desirable. Is it a joke of some sort? The linux screenshot is just...weird.
Its a lot lovelier once you've got it in your hands and realize its actually very, very comfortable to hold for hours on end - unlike iPads/iPhones/most other mobile devices.
I'm really surprised by the amount of criticism this project is getting, especially compared to the dozens of other Kickstarter 'hits' that I felt were more deserving of said critique.
The real question to me is this - can this team pull it off? If yes, then I don't care about the state of the project, only that the team is invested in it. If the team cannot, then yes, that's a real problem. However, I don't see anyone talking about the team at all.
My biggest critique with this KickStarter is they are promising hardware in eight months where only a single prototype exists currently. Like the article says, these guys are not Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc so I don't have very much faith in them actually hitting their target date.
I could easily see this shipping on time but with tons of bugs in the hardware or shipping 10 months late because they didn't realize how complicated it was.
Even the Elevation Dock KickStarter, which was the first KickStarer golden goose, has had serious delays and they are building a simple iPhone dock.
Sure, but that's becoming par for the course. You could easily blame the backers as much as you could the creators. I've backed many projects that were much simpler and still had huge delays...Pogo's Tibet remix as an example.
Ouya is going to kill the Kickstarter brand. These guys have no clue how to manufacture any hardware and are seriously underestimating the difficulty of turning a prototype into an assembly line. There will be many delays and broken promises on the way to a very late and very disappointing final product, and the whole well-publicized ordeal is going to poison Kickstarter in people's minds.
Can anyone who's done outsourced hardware comment on how hard that part actually is? I mean, if I met with someone from Foxconn and said, "listen, I need to you to take this 3d model of a plastic case, slam in an Android SoC and some I/O ports and a power supply and have test units ready in two months and another 50,000 ready to go by March, I can give you $80 a piece up front" -- could I plausibly get something of decent quality? What does this process actually require on the retail end in terms of time and money and expertise?
Seems to me the controller might be the hard part -- more UX testing, less standard parts. But I'd love to hear from someone who's solved this kind of problem.
It's somewhat amusing to me to see several comments on this thread wave away the actual hardware as an "outsourced design" or "just call Asus". I have to assume it's a result of people not understanding the complexity of modern hardware.
First, I've been unable in my (admittedly, cursory) research to discover any prebuilt systems that even come close to their promised hardware specs. So until someone proves me wrong by posting a link to an OTS solution even close to what they're promising, lets assume that the system needs custom design.
This is a whole massive can of worms. I have some experience with hardware design (though not as much as a full-blown EE), and I'd ballpark hardware design alone as a half-year effort with multiple full-time EEs. And that's a best-case optimistic estimate. People who work in software don't seem to understand how hard this stuff is. It's not like you can simply take another schematic, slap the new parts you want on, delete the old parts, autoroute it and call it a day. With parts of this complexity there's a whole host of other design issues that come out of the woodwork. High-frequency switching means if one of your autorouted traces is longer than another, you're going to have timing issues. Crosstalk between layers, capacitance and inductance of the wires themselves can wreak havoc on your busses. You need to intelligently design the ground planes, separate your signals (analog and digital components), etc etc etc.
These are only the issues I'm aware of. I'm sure people experienced with creating boards this complex can fill me in on more. It's not like a hobby arduino project - hooking up traces to debug problems can increase the capacitance of a line enough to cause a new set of problems.
This isn't really directed just towards you, but it feels like a ton of people here are missing how difficult hardware design with components this complex is.
Price point: $384. With an LCD. This isn't even close to comparable to the product they're trying to make. So to close the gap, you say:
> Drop the camera, the touch screen, the battery and the enclosure, I bet you I could get a deal for these boards well under $50 for 10,000+ lots.
Engineering tightly integrated consumer electronics products like these isn't a menu. You can't just "unplug" the monitor "remove" the battery and then repackage it. Redesign of a processor board of this complexity isn't a picnic; it takes significant EE expertise.
And with an initial price point almost 4x that Ouya promises? Please. This isn't "comparable" at all. You want a comparable piece of hardware? See http://trimslice.com/web/order-direct. Twice the price point with significantly less horsepower. That's what people are probably going to get in the end with this project.
Firstly, the question was "there is no comparable system on the market with those specs," I was pointing out there was a system with those specs, which has already been cloned.
Secondly, the screen, battery, and about 50% of the time the camera, are NOT integral on the board. They plug into headers. I'm not sure who's misinformed you of this, but not everyone designs like Apple. And yes, I can "just remove the screen, battery, and likely the camera." I just don't plug them into the headers. How many EEs do you think are working in China for these manufacturers?
Thirdly, it's interesting that you have both insight into the margins of several different hardware manufacturers and also into the internal R&D discussions of Ouya to know that they are going to end up selling a $200 Tegra2 instead of a $99 Tegra3 device. Gosh, they should've just hired you, no?
Why so aggressive arguing that they can't do it? It's one thing to be suspicious (and I, am suspicious as to their ability to hold reasonable overall margins unless they intend to make over 50k of these), it's another to spread FUD that something is impossible.
You CAN'T just unplug the screen, battery, and camera from the board and then stuff it into a new form factor. The board will have to be redesigned to fit into a new form factor and accommodate new peripherals. This will take significant time and effort, regardless of whether the engineering is done in the US, China, or Zimbabwe.
> Thirdly, it's interesting that you have both insight into the margins of several different hardware manufacturers and also into the internal R&D discussions of Ouya to know that they are going to end up selling a $200 Tegra2 instead of a $99 Tegra3 device. Gosh, they should've just hired you, no?
This is just silly. I point out a system on the market with much closer specs to what Ouya is trying to accomplish (no screen, similar outputs, etc) and point out that's still twice their price point. I have seen no evidence from Ouya, you, or anyone else that they can do anything different. Until then, I'll remain skeptical that they'll deliver on their promises.
> Why so aggressive arguing that they can't do it?
It'd be awesome if they pulled it off; I'm just pointing out that they probably won't. And if I came off as aggressive, it's because of all the armchair engineers around here who think consumer hardware design is a walk in the park that can be completed on a whim in an instant.
> it's another to spread FUD that something is impossible.
Go find where I said "impossible". My entire post just points out how unlikely it is this project is going to deliver what it promises.
Your entire day is made easier and your life longer because many people ignored comments like this to produce all the services and inventions you now take for granted.
"We break things. Julie Uhrman has been in games for a long time, at Vivendi Universal, IGN, GameFly, and other places. Yves Behar is the award-winning designer of Jambox, One Laptop per Child, and many others. There are plenty of other people involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are."
Julie Uhrman is an executive (http://www.linkedin.com/in/julieuhrman). Yves Behar is a designer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_B%C3%A9har). Until I hear about the involvement of at least one full-time electrical engineer and embedded software developer, I'll be highly skeptical that they can deliver anything that they promise.
Especially in the time frame cited; I've worked in both fields and unless they have experienced full-time engineers and developers working on this right now there's no way they're making the deadline. The "we have a prototype" is at best a vague indicator of progress. Do they have a board designed? Has it been fabricated? Do they even have android running on the hardware they plan on using?
If not, are they using off-the-shelf boards? I can't find any Tegra 2 OTS boards available remotely within the price point they list, much less Tegra 3.
And the "some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are" is more disconcerting than assuring. If they do have people with engineering/manufacturing/software development expertise these people do not believe in this project enough to leave their day job. That should speak for itself.
EDIT: for example, see http://trimslice.com/web/order-direct. Their Tegra 2 board with more modest hardware specifications is only available at more than twice the price point touted for Ouya. Note that this doesn't even include the cost of the custom bundled controller, which is itself a substantial hardware undertaking.
Concept design and manufacturing are completely different things. I'm talking about manufacturing experience, and they have none. Zero. You can be sure they'd have mentioned it if they did. Let me address their only revealed experience: "Vivendi Universal, IGN, GameFly," those are all 100% software. "[They] would get fired if we tell you who they are", really? They're asking for millions of our dollars and they aren't confident enough to even minimally risk their current jobs by publicly supporting their own project? That's a huge red flag.
The console industry is littered with spectacular failures of this type, and I'm before I believe this one is worth investing actual money in I'm going to need more than Yves Behar, Julie Uhrman who's "been in the game industry for years" (exclusively on the software side), and several mysterious people who refuse to even be named.
Really? How do you know they have no clue how to manufacture any hardware? I can see their pedigree, what do you know about it that the rest of us don't?
On the other hand, the current generation of game consoles is very underpowered compared to commodity hardware these days. That means that you can probably produce a product that competes with them in specs very cheaply, which Ouya can take advantage of. I really don't think that hardware is going to be their biggest challenge.
There are past projects that might make a person wary of an unproven company trying to produce a console. There's the Phantom, which is fairly infamous. And the Open Pandora guys still haven't manufactured enough consoles to even fulfill preorders, several years on.
Yes, but we're talking about a project being designed by one of the more famous industrial designers in the world, who also works for other hardware manufacturers (Jawbone, for example), and more than likely has a very deep network of hardware manufacturing contacts to draw upon. Just because some projects failed doesn't mean every related project will fail - unless the assumption here is that the only companies capable of bringing a console of any sort to market are MS, Sony, and Nintendo these days.
Yes, but it doesn't hurt to be skeptical. Everyone who pledges should know they're paying for a product that doesn't exist yet and currently has no confirmed games. The project description does everything it can to gloss that over, and even outright lies in some places (like with the Minecraft thing).
There is one thing the Ouya has that no other niche console/handheld has ever had... an existing base of software already written and ready to run on it.
Seriously, if you are an android dev you'll need to retool your controls, not port the entire game from one language/platform to anther. That is one of the easier problems to solve as far as making this product a hit.
Really, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point Gamestop buys the Ouya so that they can get in on the digital revenue before their whole business model shuts down. Why do you think Amazon has their own android app store?
Software sales are obviously going, going, gone digital, so Best Buy, Amazon, Gamestop are going to have to become digital stores to sell software/games or they become irrelevant like record stores did a decade ago.
It might be too late, but don't be surprised if BestBuy/Gamestop buy or build something just like the Ouya.
Are you suggesting that the porting is the difficult part, or redesigning the controls is the difficult part. If the former I will refer you to my previous post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4231971
There are a lot of games that would be better played using an actual joystick, heck, lots of them have virtual joysticks or virtual buttons.
There are very few games that were really designed based on touch controls.
Not sure that is the case, pretty much every game I have installed on my android phone is designed specifically for touch controls, some of them would work OK on a mouse. Very few would be playable on a controller.
Regards joysticks, the only games that I can think of that would be better on a joystick would be flight simulators which probably partly explains the lack of "serious" flight sims available on consoles.
I meant controller when I said joystick, it is the common name where I live.
The majority of games I have on my android have virtual buttons and virtual sticks, some are ports of older console games, like Max Payne, GTA 3 and sonic CD, some are those gameloft action games and some others are action games from EA and madfinger. I even use my PS3 controller and my device plugged on the tv to play better some of those games.
I know it's very possible for it to be made because $99 Android TV devices already exist including the new Google TVs and the tiny Android Mini PC. (I'm also a huge proponent of Android becoming the OS for everything: device, desktop, TV, cars, & appliances.)
Ouya is the 2nd $99 Android "TV device" I've seen pop up on Kickstarter. The first project was essentially a Mini PC re-branded for Americans (so I passed on it).
Ouya has two hurdles:
1) repackaging it in a new container and tossing in a controller all for the same price. Possible? Sure.
2) Android is such a fast moving platform that their device could be outdated/outclassed by the time they finish shipping. If Google had a clue, they'd repackage the Google TV as a gaming station before Xmas.
There is of course an alternative explanation for all of this which is that they don't give a shit about this being a "success" in any commercial or "market share" sense and simply wanted to hack together a cool piece of hardware that they wanted themselves and thought they could make that a reality if enough likeminded people wanted it too.
That could explain why they asked for $1M on kickstarter rather than taking a chunk of investment the usual way.
Welp, I officially wish this article came out before I pledged on Kickstarter for an OUYA system. I guess we (people who have pledged) can just hope with over $4,000,000 from Kickstarter, they can make some of the systems "dreams" come true! Haha
As I've already mentioned in another thread, OUYA isn't made to replace the Xboxes, Wiis, and PS's of the world. OUYA is not for the mainstream masses. OUYA is a cool and cheap experiment for hackers and developers who like gaming akin to the venerable GP32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP32
I suggest the Penny Arcade guys (who, umm, write a webcomic, what do they know about anything technical?) have a read of The Future Was Here, the story of the Commodore Amiga, for a glimpse at how good engineers with a belief in their mission can go from breadboard to world-beating product almost before you can blink...
The author of the article is not one of the comic guys, he was the games journalist of Ars Technica for something like 10 years. Now, that's of course not a technical merit. But it does perhaps suggest some familiarity with the games industry...
Perhaps you could come up with some talking points that address the misgivings presented in the article, rather than attacking the author? Possibly something a bit more substantial than just comparing this project to one done by incredibly talented engineers, and backed by the company that had already made world's best selling computer.
This particular article is credited to Ben Kuchera, ex-gaming editor for Ars Technica of nine or so years. While he may not be a high-profile programmer or developer, his past work is evidence that he knows quite a bit about the industry.
