Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.ouya.tv/

There is more information on the device on the Kickstarter page. They asked for $950,000 and got almost 9 million!

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

Also XMBC are supporting it

http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/08/07/x ... a-oh-yeah/

$120 with a game controller, expected in April 2013

The level of support it's garnered indicates it'll see some measure of success, but personally I'm a bit mystified by it all. iOS and Android devices are useful for mobile gaming because they're portable and you've always got your phone on you when you're out of the house. And some people like to tap around on their iPhone/iPad playing games even in the house obviously. But as soon as you attach a control pad and plug it into a TV then you're playing with the big boys and the kind of games Android can currently offer just don't stand up to PS3/Xbox stuff. The actual hardware cost isn't even really a factor now when an Xbox can be picked up for cheap brand new these days. The only real differentiator is the cost of the software as obviously Android games are cheaper comparatively, but if you're willing to wait a few months and pick Xbox games up when they're older (and second hand) then I think you're still getting much more bang for your buck in terms of the quality of the games and the amount of content in them.

The only other factor that might help it is developer support. There's a few big names being associated with it and it strikes me that it could be attractive to them as, presumably, it doesn't cost the same amount to develop for as the PS3 and Xbox. That's especially a potential factor with the recent discussions of Fez not getting patched due to the ludicrous charge MS wanted to levy for that. If developers want to support it because it makes their lives easier and cheaper then seeing decent new games for it by big names might convince consumers to adopt it I suppose. But it's still going to be fighting the Xbox/PS3 for every single sale thought to my mind and that's some exhausting shit for a new platform.

I think it'll flop, for reasons along these lines: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... uld-be-ske

It might make a decent XBMC box, but it looks a bit overpriced compared to the Raspberry Pi, and that already exists.

If the PS3 ever stops easily playing downloaded HD stuff (it's had a few wobbles recently) then I'd be tempted by something like this because I'm already familiar with the Android platform so wouldn't need to bugger about learning my way round Linux as I would with the Raspberry Pi. Also, being able to play whatever games come out for the Ouya would be a nice bonus. That's a position that's very specific to me though and I don't imagine it would sell much kit for them.

Development versions of these are being sent out to kick starter backers, there's quite a few videos of unboxing/using on YouTube. It's looking quite interesting.
And some of the hardware it's going to be running has been announced.

CPU = Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9
Storage = 8GB internal flash memory
It's about the size of a rubik's cube.

Wikipedia page

It's also apparently been made easy to open, so that people can mod it as they want.
The version of Android it runs on can also be rooted, without voiding to warrenty.

Backers to receive their consoles sometime this month. Impressive. I thought it'd be another Kickstarter casualty. It might have a similar catalogue to the 3DO at launch though.

A good Need 4 Speed game then hopefully!

Seriously though, a friend of mine has one of these on order so I'll post something on it once I've had a play with it.

Unsurprising.

Isn't that the "point" of kickstarting. The clue is kind of in the name.

I've played with an Ouya this evening... I'll file a detailed report in the morning.

Right then, The Ouya. First impressions are that the console itself is lovely and small. It’s a tiny box that sits under the TV and it’s very indiscrete. The controller is pretty much an Xbox 360 controller in different colours. It’s pretty sturdy and the analogue sticks feel good but the plastic was a little too smooth for my liking. Also, the buttons are a little spongy but more on this later.

When I loaded it up it took a while to update but it had those silly messages under the progress bar saying things like “Cleaning the windows” or “tidying things up”.. You know, like Hipster type things. I didn’t like this.

The initial menu is simple with 4 choices. Play, Discover, Make and Manage.

Play opens a menu with the games that you’ve installed/bought. Discover goes into the shop where all the games are presented in equally sized squares. I think they might struggle to fit all the games in here and still make them look nice but we’ll see.

Make allows you to design your own games. I didn’t mess with this much and Manage opens the settings menu which is pretty much identical to any Android phone.

I played Pinball Arcade, Canabalt and a couple of other games that I didn’t recognise. Pinball arcade was kind of identical to the Xbox version so that’s alright. Canabalt was exactly as you’d expect with a kick ass soundtrack. The bigger screen helped the game too.

Because all the games are free, you only have 5 credits a day on Canabalt with the option to buy more for real money. I imagine that all the games have similar structures to this.

But how did it play? Well.. It was ok actually. The games played pretty much like how you’d expect them to play so they’re ok there. The loading times were pretty nippy and everything looked good.

The only problems I had was the fact that the controller had some seriously noticeable lag. It made playing the Pinball Arcade a bit difficult but hopefully they can fix this. Also, the O button on the controller (the B button on the Xbox 360 controller) brought up the menu. There’s no start or pause button on the controller so I think this is it’s replacement. Seems a strange place to put it and it will take some getting used to.

One interesting thing about the console which probably won’t last is the fact that there’s a ton of emulators available for it and they’re all available on the first menu of the shop so if you know where to get the Roms, you’re away.

Overall… and I know this was a quick review but I’m at work.. I like the console. It’s not going to trouble the PS3 or Xbox 360 but it’s only £99.99 and it’s a simple way to play mobile games on a big screen. It may be worth it for the emulators alone for some people but keep an eye on that input lag! That needs to be fixed.

I don't think this word means what you think it means.

Or, maybe it might. If it does, you may have used it perfectly

How come you got to play with one, anyway?

Nope.. Typo. I meant discrete.

Anyway, a friend of mine backed it on Kickstarter and has had it for a few weeks now.

The controller lag in Pinball Arcade could be from the game itself. It certainly had lag when I tried it on my phone.

Nope, you meant discreet

Indiscrete, however, means "not in separate parts", so you were the best kind of correct

Wow.. How did I manage that?

I thought that but it was the same in Canabalt.

Well, that is a bit of a killer.

I have become acutely aware of control lag, since last summer. I visited a Video Game Museum and played 1942 in an original cabinet, actual hardware. It was astounding! The way I could suddenly dodge bullets and planes like I never was able to in MAME. I made it more than twice as far as I ever could in the emulated version.

This experience essentially killed emulators for me, and I used to be very big on them (the shitty way they look on LCD panels being another reason). Of course, even hooking up a game console to a non-CRT TV introduces lag, and wireless controllers add lag on top of that. It seems the last completely lag free game experience available was a PS2 hooked up to a CRT, which is kind of sad.

it arrived yesterday, and after some fun unboxing, i was quite dissapointed.. interface is just horrible, and can download emulator but not just use usb sticks..

Every time I see this, I think of the aliens from War of the Worlds.

I did a quick Google and apparently it does work but is a bit flakey and they're working on a patch to have it work reliably. There's also some people saying you just need to look for the USB drive in a slightly odd place:



From here.

thanks bamba, got a farther npw as well (had a quite frustrating evening yesterdau with dealing with the ouya and my daughter being awake)

i can find my usb drive now (discovering that location), but since it is formatted exFAT ouya won't read it, only fat32.. not sure if i have one usb that is formatted fat32..(google says)

i just screams for a decent filemanager or ftp or something.. i now sideloaded astrofilemanager pro to get some stuff on it.. even when the gba emulator is in the ouya store.. how you can add a gba emulator to a store,.. (even on the front page) without have a normal way to get into the actual files seems weird...

but using the filemanager i managed to connect to box.net (googledrive asks for a google play store update and dropbox fails in the autorization screen), and this way put supermario world on it, and using the snes9x emulator i played supermario world.. not really world shocking, but it is a start... now copying raiden dx on the psx to it.. to give it some life on the emu box...

played some of the proper ouya games, and a race platformer seems nice, other things i already had on iOS and are better with the icade i think...(league of evil, super crate box)

I think that was more "ooh-laa" but, yes, that was my first thought too.

Yeah

Finally management to play Einhänder (PSX,1998, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einhänder) on the Ouya... but what a work

I still don't have a good working usb stick on it.. i even reformatted one to fat32, but nothing helped..

So i now installed Amazon Appstore.. from the weblink... that actually works, so it made me install dropbox (android) (i first had astro file manager already installed, but doesn't go beyond the dropbox authorization screen)..

Dropbox works quite nice, so i transfered einhander to my dropbox, to a public folder, and then exported from there to my ouya..

and fpse plays it nicely then..

so solution now is quite comfy, but sloooww...

Completely puzzled as why a supposedly open system doesn't have a proper file manager, isn't easily ftp'able and doesn't support usb properly. yet...

Oh man, I stuck that game on my PSP the other week. It's quite something! PS1 was excellent for shooters, it turns out. Shame everyone was looking at 3D third person adventurey stuff by then.

woohoo, got a new usb stick.. (supplied by the government none the less.. seems fitting in a way) and that actually works on my ouya.. so put some more psxgames on.


ashens has reviewed it by the way now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvHEIwKT ... r_embedded

Has anyone tried sideloading the Netflix app onto it yet?

will do soon, when netflix start in the netherlands... but what i heard it was kinda horrible..