The OUYA News Thread December 2013

[jalaneme]

That MOJO console is the first ive seen of it. Looks nice and sleek as well. £219 they have it for on their own website. Is tegra 4 a big step up from tegra 3?

yes it's very nice and very expensive (wish i had one though) and it's tegra 4 so it's future proof for now.

 

[FireGrey]

There's dozens of us!

Dozens!

last i checked dozens =/= 2

 

[LightyKD]

M.O.J.O. has decent specs. Yes, they're better than OUYA on paper but it all comes down to development community and optimizations. I seriously doubt we will see a game that will fully utilize Tegra 4 before Tegra 5 comes out and by then I'm sure the OUYA will be sporting a nice Tegra 5 card. Also, think about this. M.O.J.O. will be relying heavily on Google Play. While that sounds great from the beginning, that means that you will literally have to shuffle through a ton of games just to find ones that are TV friendly and controller compatible.

EVERY game and app in OUYA's "Discover" section is guaranteed to be compatible with the OUYA controller and not to mention, you aren't "dinged" for installing Google Play on your OUYA. Personally I use both stores on my OUYA. I will always buy the OUYA version of a game first but I'm not blind to the fact that some devs just wont bring their games over so I use Google Play for the other games.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Anyone who genuinely hates the OUYA when the only source of info they have is bad internet review written by people who also have no idea about what they are trying to accomplish, really has no say in the matter. OUYA aren't trying to compete with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Nor are they trying to compete with Apple or Google. They want to carve out a new (or rather old) demographic, especially among those who dislike the way that the games industry has been heading the past decade or so. Remember when everyone though Nintendo were stupid for targeting the Wii and non-games? how much they would fail by not specifically targeting the 'core' first-person shooter crowd? Look what happened there.

I bought my OUYA a while ago, since then it has had a couple of firmware updates, fixing quite a few issue that genuine users have commented about. Unlike system updates on other machine, these guys actually tell you what they've done, none of this 'general upgrades to help user experience' crap. Having developed for Apple in the past, I can also tell you all that the app submission process is not only much much easier, but you receive genuinely useful feedback from the app review people, even personal comments about how much they enjoy the games etc. I've even had emails out of the blue from other members of the OUYA team telling me how much they enjoyed my game.
To those complaining about the hardware choices made by OUYA, Nintendo have proved a few times over that better hardware does not make a better system. It's entirely down to the games people make for it and how much people enjoy playing those games. To top it off, there are more than 500 games on OUYA, some of those by big name developers.

To some up whats good about OUYA - They want to return to the golden gaming age of the 70s and 80s, when the entire industry wasn't run by a couple of big companies and that anyone who wanted, could make a game that they and others can enjoy playing on a genuine games console without having to pay $thousands for the 'privilege'.
They want to prove to the world that you don't need to spend $20,000,000 on a game for it to be good, you don't have to sell your games for $70 get make back your money and mostly, you shouldn't rely on a couple of big companies to tell you which games are good and which aren't.

So before you go hating a system, buy one, play some of the games, hell play all of the games, but don't just rely on what a couple of people have said about early preview units. That's just plain stupidity.

Couple of things though, is the "golden age of gaming" you speak of, is when the game industry started to go down hill, with the market being over saturated with consoles. Hell even this day I personally think there are too many consoles.

Also, if Ouya is meant to not compete with the big 3, then they shouldn't be holding their own event across the street from E3.

 

[spinal_cord]

Ahhh i see! So if i was to go over to America then and change £100 into local currency (about $160) id get an Ouya but have nothing left over in terms of money? Or would i perhaps still have about $50 in my pocket left over? The point I was trying to make was nothing to do with tax, it was that it is actually, genuinely cheaper over there than it is here.

Unless sales tax in the US is 63%, the prices aren't that similar.

VAT is not the only expense involved, there is also import duty and shipping charges. All of which get passed on to the customer.
For example, my girlfriend was going to buy a figurine from US. The original cost was about $90, the shipping was about $30 and import taxes was about $70. This brought the final cost to more than double the purchase price....she decided against it

 

[Foxi4]

spinal_cord you said that perfectly! The OUYA has really changed into a solid platform over the past few months.

The problem with the OUYA is that the OUYA is not a platform in and out of itself - Android is. Other than a handful of exclusives (which more than likely can be launched on different devices anyways) the OUYA doesn't break out of the mold, it's yet another Android device and you can experience anything it has to offer on any other Android device, at least that's how I see it.

 

[Qtis]

VAT is not the only expense involved, there is also import duty and shipping charges. All of which get passed on to the customer.
For example, my girlfriend was going to buy a figurine from US. The original cost was about $90, the shipping was about $30 and import taxes was about $70. This brought the final cost to more than double the purchase price....she decided against it

If the person happens to be in the US for example for work or travel, you're allowed to import stuff up to a total of... erm. I think it's around 500€ (at least for Finland). In that case, it would make sense to buy from the US. But alas, it depends a lot on the situation. My PSVita for example cost me about 130 euros (White PSVita, AC3:L, 4GB memory, PSABR, 3months PS+) while the price would have been about 300 euros here. It was including shipping and all the rest via Amazon. Happened to be about 50 lower in just numbers for the starting price so it was really worth it, but I digress.

 

[Veho]

...the OUYA doesn't break out of the mold, it's yet another Android device and you can experience anything it has to offer on any other Android device, at least that's how I see it.

It's a good value for money.

 

[Foxi4]

It's a good value for money.

Here I agree - it is. The problem being that chances are that you, your family and your dog already have devices that do the exact same thing and are compatible with the exact same software, making the purchase sort of pointless.

 

[spinal_cord]

Here I agree - it is. The problem being that chances are that you, your family and your dog already have devices that do the exact same thing and are compatible with the exact same software, making the purchase sort of pointless.

Not necessarily, for example, if I have a galaxy tab 7", then I cant' plug it into a TV....
This device not only plugs into a TV, but because it runs of a real power supply rather than batteries, then it can run everything to its full spec, rather than under-clocking things to save power. Not only that, it doesn't run 'phone' crap in the background, leaving more resources for the games.
Sure it might be 'just a none portable Android device' but thats what people wanted, enough people to raise $8m and to keep sales going afterward. I know people who don't see the point, will never go out and buy one, but consider this, one of the biggest complaints people have ever had about modern mobile games is that there are no 'real' controller options. Creating phones with game controllers built in hasn't worked so well, creating 3rd party controllers also hasn't worked very well either. It has taken Apple nearly 7 years to listen to people and even bother to lay the foundations for controller support. But then here comes an Android device capable of playing a lot of the current Android games, as well as a whole bunch (500+) of new games ported or created specifically for it, on your TV with a real controller and people are now complaining that 'you can just do that on your phone'.

You wont convince the people who like OUYA to think its a bad idea, similarly those of us who like OUYA might not be able to convince those that don't, that it is a good idea.
But if I wanted this functionality and my current phone does not support it, would it be better for me to pay $300 - $500 for a new phone just so I can plug it into a TV, or $99 for a console that runs most of the same games?