Pre-sale: OUYA $99 HDTV Android-based console in stores this June 25th

Remember this console? Turns out they ended up raising over $8.5 million and were a major success.

You can buy it either on their officially-made website or on Amazon, at Target or other major retailer sites.

Those of you who were smart enough to back it on Kickstarter will be getting your consoles a little early and shipped out on March 28th.

There are already over 500 confirmed games set to be on this console, including some key exclusives.

If you buy, don't forget CashBack.

Since this is open source. Do they allow you to use universal Controllers?

>> were a major success

I'd argue that until its a household name, on every other kid's Christmas list, its little better than "As seen on TV!".

Just pre-ordered one from Amazon. Once some decent emulators come out, this will be great!

odnerd said:   Just pre-ordered one from Amazon. Once some decent emulators come out, this will be great!

It will come with a Nintendo 64 emulator preloaded.

owenscott said:   A silly im over 40 years old and it shows but i still want to be cool to my kids question ... how do you pronounce this ?
How do you pronounce OUYA?

From their FAQ
OOO-yah. Apparently it doesn’t have the most pleasant meaning in Swahili.

greling said:   
Uh, the developer units were buggy and hurriedly made from cheap transparent plastic. They don't look anywhere near what the final product will look like. The developer units were rushed out, warts and all, so that more experienced devs could produce games and try them out on something other than their PC. They are collector's items. And, one of the first things they changed in response to developer feedback was the controller.

OUYA controller sees revamp after developer feedback

If you bought a $300 developer kit in the beta stage, hoping to save money and have a perfect product, when the regular unit itself was priced at just $99, then I really have to question your judgement.

Those of us who participated in the $99 Kickstarter deal are not only getting our devices shipped to us 3 months in advance, but our device will be marked as collectors items, our usernames reserved well in advanced, and we got second controllers for half off of what they are going for now.

The developer units being rushed, buggy, and shoddily made should be a giant warning alarm to anyone considering pre-ordering this very questionable device. I certainly did not buy a developer console as I am no developer, but I have read with great interest and a growing sense of dismay the details of the quality of the developer hardware. The idea that the thrown-together developer consoles will ever be anything even remotely resembling a "collectors item" is laughable at best.

My point is, this is not a standard game console. There is no conceivable benefit to pre-ordering one when you really have no idea what you will be getting. There is still a huge amount riding on the release at the end of the month.

Here's what it all really comes down to: at this point, approximately 60k units have been sold. Sixty thousand users isn't nearly a large enough user base to attract developers in the long term. OUYA desperately needs a few things to happen to get that user base to grow: first there needs to be something really impressive happening on that tv screen when the first users power up their shiny new OUYA consoles, something that gets a lot of that initial user base throwing up videos and reviews all over the net showing off their amazing new toy. Next, there needs to be at least one killer game, something that can only be played on the OUYA and gets amazing reviews, and it has to show up in pretty short order, like in the three months between the Kickstarter shipments and the retail release.

Unfortunately, there is very little indicator that either of these things will happen. It's going to be a race: can the OUYA prove itself before the potential user base loses interest? I certainly wouldn't bet on success. Oh wait, I already did. Crap.

And there are three Killer app games that are going to be on it, that made me want to buy this on its own: Shadowrun Online, Final Fantasy III and Double Fine Adventure. Hardcore gaming Fanatics already are familiar with what they are about.

Sorry but Ooya is DOA. It reminds me of those cheap "controller games" you buy from the kiosk at the mall (hook the controller to the TV and it plays like 3 old school games). This is the same concept.

So, this thread inspired me to read up in some of the developer forums for the OUYA and it's related software, and I have to say, things aren't exactly looking good. Game developers are concerned about how OUYA plans to be both completely open and still curb piracy, there has been no clear response from the OUYA team. So far, there hasn't even been any sort of consensus on how to implement a pause feature into games, as no one thought to design the controllers with a "start" button or similar. We're exactly three weeks away from the ship date and the OUYA team still hasn't even decided what the darned thing is even going to be made of yet (brushed aluminum for both the console and the controller was stated in one statement last week, but that was changed the next day to "we're not revealing that yet") The developer consoles have been overheating due to poor design, so the demo that they've been showing at press conferences had a fan stuck in it that has been reported to be as loud as a small blowdryer. In live presentations, Uhrman seems to be essentially making up the things she says as goes.

Essentially, we've got a product that to any rational person who knows anything about product development is at least six months from completion, and they plan to ship it in three weeks. This is going to be interesting to say the least.

One small positive note, progress on the XBMC port seems to be coming along swimmingly. So, worst case scenario, those who backed the kickstarter should end up with a decent little media player if nothing else. I'm certainly hoping for more, but if it comes to it I can live with that.

Piracy is actually not as big of an issue on the OUYA as people believe it is, due to the way the store works. Basically, apps are downloaded for free (not purchased). And then OUYA provides a generic IAP service for your game, where the IAP service provides in-app purchases (such as in-game items), entitlements (such as full-version unlocks or DLC purchases), or subscriptions (pay a monthly fee).

Your game contacts the OUYA servers to check whether or not the user has purchased the item (for example, a paid game would contact the OUYA servers to check if the user has purchased the 'Full Game' entitlement, if so it allows the user to play the full feature set of the game, otherwise the game defaults to "trial" mode or some similar behavior). This means there is no difference between the full game and the trial game, the game itself is just one single application that checks whether it should operate in Trial Mode or Full Mode. So even if a hacker rips the APK off of the internal storage and distributes it, they are not distributing anything other than what anybody and their mom could download off of the OUYA store for free anyway.

If anyone should be concerned about piracy, it's Nintendo, it's Sony, and it's Microsoft. A closed-source, closed-hardware console does nothing to prevent piracy.

By their very nature, if you can put playable data on console media, you can take data off them. Boxer8 is making the right decision to make an open console that emphasizes free play. If anything, the free-to-play model discourages piracy. Just look at Steam.

Seems like Loren Brichter's infamous article has gotten too much syndicated coverage. He should go back to writing Apple fanboy stuff, so he can get his job back.

Well, let me try to give you some other ideas of why I think it's great:

1. It's not that it's running Android; it's awesome because it's an open platform.

2. It allows your kids/spouse to play it without tying up your phone.

3. It's CHEAP! (Half the price of the cheapest Wii or XBox model and it comes with much more games to play. Xbox has yet to even come close to 500.)

4. The company behind it is supportive of the hacking and homebrew scene.

5. It's an AWESOME teaching platform. None of the consoles give full access to students to learn development. It also has teaching potential beyond the game arena. I'd get this before I'd get the Raspberry Pi any day.

6. It is fairly feature rich and a finished product. Great for hackers who only want to mess with the software side.

7. I think that the casual gamer market is vastly under estimated. The Wii sold truckloads but now its kind of long in the tooth. I can see the Ouya replacing the Wii for a large group of people.

already getting crowded, how much space is there available in the market?

gamestick
PROJECT SHIELD

Closing arguments:
Is the Ouya Worth Buying?

Theverge.com's review calls the interface "a mess" and states blatantly that no one should buy it in it's current state. Gives it a 3.5/10 rating, the second lowest review they've ever given.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4180242/ouya-review

it's going straight to big lots, isn't it?

or unsuspecting grannies on QVC for Christmas gifts

skh12 said:   it's going straight to big lots, isn't it?

or unsuspecting grannies on QVC for Christmas gifts

No, because the company doesn't have enough capital to produce a surplus of units. If/when it fails, they'll just halt production and that'll be the end of it.

greling said:   I am bookmarking this thread so that all the naysayers will be embarrassed in the future for their silly predictions.

are we supposed to be embarrassed yet?

greling said:   Ignore Those Early Negative Ouya Reviews. It Wasn't Ready.

While the Android-powered Ouya isn't hitting retail until early June, early backers have received their preview units, and some of them don't have very positive things to say about the great open source console hope. That's to be expected as, according to the console maker, the system isn't review-ready yet.

Real easy to trash the beta version of something two months before its retail release.

"according to the console maker, the system isn't review-ready yet"?? Are you kidding me? A month ago Uhrman was quoted as saying “Our hardware is baked, it's complete, it's done,” and now that this piece of garbage is getting trashed by everyone who gets their hands on one, it's a "beta version"? So, where does that leave the 60,000 Kickstarter backers who had no idea that they were buying into a "beta version"?

A month ago when I replied in this thread for the first time, I at least had a small hope that this thing wouldn't be a total bust. Unfortunately, at this point, there's just no way. The only hope I have left is that my Kickstarter console will ship before the retail date (which, it seems, is extremely unlikely - it's been two weeks since shipping began, and people comparing notes on various forums have come to the conclusion that less than 300 units have been shipped so far) and I'll be able to dump it on eBay.

I think it's staggeringly obvious that the wings have already come off, and at this point we're just waiting for the inevitable crash to the ground. To quote the article you linked to: "there's no way in hell the Ouya folks can turn this around in two months". I agree completely.

What Games Are - The Reviewers Are Wrong About OUYA

When considering a device like OUYA or GameStick, the phrase “Android console” conjures up two comparisons. On the one hand there is the temptation to look at them as Android phone-alikes and then start to wonder why they don’t have 100,000 games, or no Google Play store, or alternatively to get all huffy about how much Android is apparent (this was part of The Verge’s review – and it’s the sort of point that only a tech journalist would ever care about).

The second comparison is with consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. In this mould, OUYA and similar are underpowered and half-baked, the reviewer looks at them and asks “could you ever see Call of Duty on this?” To which, of course, the answer is no. Or at least, not for a while.

So what comes across is the idea that the “Android console” is a device falling between two stools. But that’s largely because the tech/game-journo-land concept of what these devices are about is wrong. They’re not “Android consoles.”

i still don't feel humiliated

greling said:   I am bookmarking this thread so that all the naysayers will be embarrassed in the future for their silly predictions.