Ouya

Is this thing made yet?

Some early models have been released to certain channels, but the mass production will start in two weeks (June 25).

Oh okay. So any comments from people on it?

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/06/12/e3-2013-cops-called-to-shut-down-ouya

Wow. The ESA really hates this thing.

What

My how silly...

Yeah, that's pretty rotten of them.

Also, should I make a page for the Ouya and add it to the list of eighth-generation consoles?

edited 17th Jun '13 10:13:49 PM by TheMartianGeek1

Remember back during the SOPA incident when everyone was going to boycott the ESA and anything representing them (E3 included)?

It seems funny to me how dickish they can be despite being a representative of our community.

I'm not sure... Since the Ouya, there has been a plethora of Android-based game consoles and handhelds either released or coming out. There are as follows:

• Ouya
• GameStick
• Wikipad
• NVidia Shield
• Archos GamePad
• Madcatz M.O.J.O.

Yeah, there's half a dozen of these things now.

edited 18th Jun '13 3:06:55 AM by GameGuruGG

... I wish there was a portable arcade stick for my phone's Mame emulator.

Well. I have my backer Ouya. And after spending the whole day trying to figure out how to get a little Haxe demo to recognize the controller properly (still haven't managed it), I decided to actually give some of the actual games a shot.

My current, TL;DR verdict: there is something terribly wrong with Ouya, on the level of its very implementation.

First off: I've always had issue with the "OUYA" face buttons, which pointlessly ignore the usual "ABXY" convention - I've taken to calling them the "Green/Blue/Yellow/Red" buttons to avoid confusion. (Consider that "A" is "Cancel" on the Ouya when it is consistently "Confirm" on every other platform that has letter-named buttons.) But as I discovered, they're not nearly as jarring as the system's lack of Start and Select. Pinball Arcade, one of the two games I've tried so far, uses the aforementioned "A" button as the designated menu/pause button, which I found jarring - though it also uses the analog triggers, not the digital ones, for the flippers, suggesting that the game's controls are just generally out of whack (a sentiment reinforced by the "table start" menu, which has five items arranged like the pips on the "5" side of a die; it can only be navigated by pressing left and right). And while we're on the subject of annoying menu systems, Puddle (the other game I've tried so far) doesn't recognize the analog stick at all - you have to use the D-Pad to navigate menus.

Second off: Ouya does not have a "store." Instead, the second option on the main menu is "Discover," which brings you to a rather nicely-organized (compared to some early horror stories I heard) list of free* games arranged in various categories. That's right, free*. None of the games have prices listed on their pages: you can download and play as many as you like without paying a cent. Until you reach the end of the free-to-play content and have to pay for the full version. (What did you think that asterisk was about?) The idea must have looked brilliant on paper: every Ouya game features free content - it's one of the requirements, no joke - and so, in theory, there is a massive library of free games which you can pay for full versions of. Here's the rub: this is, at best, a market full of demos with no price tags attached, and at worst a garden of microtransaction-hungry monsters ready to pick your pockets clean. Let me say it again: there are no price tags on anything in the store, "Discover" label be damned. How am I supposed to know how much I'm going to invest in case I get invested? There's no way to find out except to download the game and fiddle around with it until you hit a pay wall, or find the "pay" option, or whatever the hell they have - and as far as I can tell, there are no standards in play. They have effectively put the onus of providing a store on their developers, adding a frustrating level of obfuscation to the process of simply buying games.

Ouya, from what little I've experienced, is a collection of decent ideas that are brutally undercut by their actual implementation - and I don't even see its value as an emulation box, since again, there are no Start and Select buttons. So much stock has been placed in the idea that Ouya is "a game console for indies," but what it feels like is a product from people who heard about game consoles, maybe saw them from a distance, and decided, "yeah, we can do that." I don't feel cheated out of my $100; Ouya still has potential, and there are many aspects of the system that have changed along its development. I just hope that the loops of tape designed to keep my controller faceplates from coming off in transit like other backer Ouyas I've heard of aren't the limit of their ability to learn from feedback.

(On that note: as spiffy as the magnetic faceplates are, I'd prefer a single battery compartment with a cover that locks with a plastic tab, like most people use.)

edited 23rd Jun '13 2:29:34 AM by Ryusui

In light of that review, I'd like to present this.

Long story short, the retail version of the Ouya is apparently significantly better than the one backers are receiving.

That's pretty much my experience right there. No latency, tape on the controllers, etc. Before I started playing, the only thing I really noticed was an odd glitch with the Account menu - it takes a few seconds to load, but there's nothing stopping you from going to another menu after selecting it, which will cause the Account menu to pop up in the middle of what you're doing.

Seriously, though, I'm really annoyed with the fact that the "Discover" menu doesn't give you any inkling of how much you're going to actually pay if you like a game - the "demo/full game" model is tried and tested, and Ouya is fiddling with it in a way that just plain doesn't work.

Well this is disappointing. Still, might be the best option for a prospective hobby developer to experiment with.

Stuart Ashen stumbled upon a backer version of the unit, despite not pledging for it, and did a review. Here it is.

This is a bad thing, yes?

I'm still seeing ads for this thing. Has the consensus changed at all or is it still considered an experimental waste of time? It sounded interesting until I came upon this thread, but maybe it's better received now that some time has passed...

edited 4th Oct '13 6:17:20 AM by Customer

If the basic Ouya's price dropped to like $75, I might consider getting one just to play The Walking Dead adventure game. A game that Telltale seems intent on releasing on every device possible except for the Wii U, the console I own.

According to reports, Ouya's owners are putting it up for sale:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/28/8509005/ouya-android-microconsole-reportedly-seeking-buyer-debt