Ouya Consoles Will Start Shipping On December 28th 121
sfcrazy writes "Ouya has stuck to its deadlines. The team has posted an update on the official blog that the units will start shipping on the scheduled date of December 28th. These units are for those developers who backed the project on Kickstarter. There is some surprise for developers with this console. 'What we didn't tell you was that the advance dev consoles you ordered are pretty special – you'll know what I mean when you open yours. They're rare drops. :P,' says the official post."
Re:Suck it down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Suck it down (Score:5, Funny)
It's perfectly fine to count eggs before they hatch. I have a dozen in my fridge right now. They look delicious. In fact, I hope they don't hatch, because I'm really craving eggs, and not chickens. Now, counting *chickens* before they hatch on the other hand...
Re: (Score:3)
It's perfectly fine to count eggs before they hatch. I have a dozen in my fridge right now. They look delicious. In fact, I hope they don't hatch, because I'm really craving eggs, and not chickens. Now, counting *chickens* before they hatch on the other hand...
And I don't even want them one day closer to hatching when I buy them. Doesn't it just mess up your mood when you crack an egg and it has some blood formed?
Re: (Score:2)
And I don't even want them one day closer to hatching when I buy them. Doesn't it just mess up your mood when you crack an egg and it has some blood formed?
If there's JUST blood you're eating it too soon... wait until it is balut... a real delicacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg) [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't it just mess up your mood when you crack an egg and it has some blood formed?
Former chicken embryologist here. Just FYI: that's not a chicken embryo. A blood spot on eggs is from the mother hen's reproductive tract. The eggs you buy in the store aren't fertilized anyway. Hens lay eggs whether or not they've been fertilized by a rooster. It would take time and effort to put the roosters in the hen cages. I guess if you're buying local free range chicken eggs, they might not be so concerned with efficiency and you might get some fertilized, but even then, you'd only know if you
Re:Suck it down (Score:5, Funny)
You're clearly not pro-life.
Re:Suck it down (Score:5, Interesting)
Suck it down all of you that claimed the Ouya would be vaporware!
I don't believe anyone said that they are vaporware.
The arguments was -- they may either under-deliver on the specs or go above the $99 cost making it. It seemed pretty convincing to me (in the previous slashdot discussions)
Let's see where it goes
There is always a possibility they will run out of money before they ship all of them.
Quite. Here's another /. prediction that we all remember well:
Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...
Raise your hand if you have both ...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
What the fuck is it with /. that attracts so many pessimistic know-it-alls who have to piss on everything on the day of its launch?
How the hell do you know how much money they've got? STFU.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually if you'd get your head out of that pop dichotomy there, you'd realize reality is what it is. it is not 'positive' or 'negative.' Everyone has different expectations and some are harder to please than others. People who label hard to please people as 'negative', are really the insecure ones because they let others' judgements affect their own perceptions.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually if you'd get your head out of that pop dichotomy there, you'd realize reality is what it is. it is not 'positive' or 'negative.' Everyone has different expectations and some are harder to please than others. People who label hard to please people as 'negative', are really the insecure ones because they let others' judgements affect their own perceptions.
Can't say I understand why you're being so mean with your response, but you're ignoring what he said and making an entirely separate point. What he said was perfectly correct. People, all people, are hard-wired to react more strongly to negative views than to positive ones. It's how insular cultures develop through self-selection bias because people don't like to hear that they're doing something wrong, and at the other end of the spectrum it's why nobody is sure how to react if you run into a room and tell
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Not for nothin', but months ago I posted that MS & other console makers should be worried, "cuz Ouya gonna getcha'". And that post got modded +5 Comedian.
I am waiting for my apology...
You are the first person I've ever seen complain about getting modded UP.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not for nothin', but months ago I posted that MS & other console makers should be worried, "cuz Ouya gonna getcha'". And that post got modded +5 Comedian.
I am waiting for my apology...
Don't worry. t least according to what I saw on Seinfeld, a Comedian is a person of great sexual prowess.
Re: (Score:2)
Note that the iPod didn't really take off until Apple replaced the Firewire port and ported iTunes to Windows. Before that, it was pretty accurate.
Re: (Score:2)
The first iPods were just FireWire hard drives. There was nothing special to them. As long as you had software that could update the library file to make the thing recognize music, you could run it from Windows. I remember that there was at least 2 or 3 third party programs you could buy at a computer store to let you use your iPod on a PC.
I don't remember anyone being sued over it.
Re: (Score:2)
People forget what the first generation iPod was like. It wasn't the instant hit that Apple is now know for. It was clunky, expensive, and Mac only. It was only in later generations that Apple improved the design, cut the price, and sold a lot of units.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What rare drops means (Score:5, Funny)
I'm interested in seeing how this will turn out. How is this console different than hooking up your smart phone(same processor right?) to your television and bluetoothing in PS3 controllers? When I first heard of this console, this is what everyone talked it was analogous to.
Re:What rare drops means (Score:4, Informative)
How is this console different than hooking up your smart phone(same processor right?) to your television and bluetoothing in PS3 controllers?
No 2-year cellular contract, and no worry that a particular brand of phone or an Android system update will change the way Bluetooth works so as to make the application stop working. For example, the Wii Remote app [google.com] is not compatible with HTC or Samsung handsets nor with Android 4.2.
Re: (Score:3)
My bet is on "Hand-crafted workmanship! (we had to manually solder extra jumper wires in these units to fix early production bugs)"
Re: (Score:2)
For some reason I hear Ricardo Montalban in the background reading "Hand crafted workmanship.. the highest quality last minute jumpers.. all with the smell of fine Corinthian leather..."
Re:28th of december? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Err, did you bother to read... anything?
They're not shipping units for sale, they're shipping dev units to people that backed them on Kickstarter. These units will almost all be going to the people who posted the money, not given away as gifts. The commercial product is still not yet for sale.
Re: (Score:2)
Err, did you bother to read... anything?
Evidently not enough, lol. I stuck to the misleading title and went... wow!
Re: (Score:2)
I beg to ask... Who schedules to ship a new product, especially one like this, immediately after Christmas?!? Either you plan to ship several weeks before Christmas for shoppers to buy it, or you ship several weeks later when people return from whatever type of vacation they took. Definitely not during that week of each year, between Christmas and New Years Eve, when potential customers already have made their Christmas purchases and occasionally maxed out their credit card, and potential reviewers are skying nowhere near their editors.
If word got out that Zynga got one, their stock price might (only saying might) slow its skid.
Re: (Score:1)
Most developers would love to spend christmas day hacking a new piece of hardware.. as a 6 digit UI slashdot user you should know this.
Re: (Score:2)
as a 5 digit UI slashdot user I can't wait to get it in the mail!
Modular arithmetic, dude (Score:2)
You know that when the first world war started, everybody thought it would be over by Christmas?
Well in a way they were right. After all, the 11th of November is about 6 weeks before ...
Ouija Consoles Will Start Shipping on December 28 (Score:2)
Am I the only one who misread that as ouija consoles, and thought that the occult were finally getting involved in the video gaming industry directly?
Re: (Score:2)
That was my first thought, as I hadn't heard of Ouya before this. I was wondering how they managed to make a console out of a Ouija board. A tormented spirit in every box!
Re: (Score:1)
Well, if it would have been that, they totally screwed up the release date.
Any true occult console would have set their release date one week earlier. ;)
Luigi board (Score:4, Funny)
I was wondering how they managed to make a console out of a Ouija board.
And I thought Nintendo would be the first console maker to ship a Luigi board.
Re: (Score:1)
Mama mia!
Re: (Score:2)
Me neither, but it's OK - the summary explains it really well.
Oy vey! Consoles Will Start Shipping! (Score:2)
. . . what a cute console name for an expression you could use when you lose a game.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are many Android-based "mini PC" devices; they are just a tad bigger than a flash drive, take microSD cards, and plug straight to a TV's HDMI. They're usually in the $60-$80 range (keyboard and mouse not included).
Re: (Score:2)
But these have the Tegra3 T33 SoC. Which are 4 core + "companion core" A9 Cortexes. Which is a top shelf SoC with a capable GPU. Judging by what I get on my tablet I would say you can get HD games with graphics comparable to a PS2. Propably even better if optimized.
Has anyone bothered yet to compare it to a Wii U? It doesn't have the Wii U's party trick but I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar when it comes to performance.
Also Android is a plattform that doesn't require an
Re: (Score:2)
I have an Asus Transformer Prime, which has the same CPU and RAM capacity as the Ouya. The Ouya may have a slightly higher clocked processor, but I doubt it at that price.
Graphics-quality-wise, even top-tier Android titles with Tegra3 optimization are nowhere near current-gen console games, especially when you're running them on a big TV. Grand Theft Auto III looks great but has short draw distance, Mass Effect Infiltrator looks good but takes place entirely in small, limited environments.
They're better tha
Re: (Score:2)
The Ouya uses a hacked Android(they just switched to 4.2) without the status navigation bar thing on the bottom and severely limited multitasking since that isn't needed And they will hopefully use faster components since IO is the Achilles heel of the Tegra3 Transformers.
I expect more agressive Tegra3 optimization for Ouya games so perhaps better visual ef
Re: (Score:2)
With any luck it could be a nice monitoring/xterm achinelet to stick into the server room.
Personally I'll try to get a development machine to dick around with. It's got nice hardware and they chose to stay away from those nasty background services that bog down most Android devices.
If they get those things into Walmart and other cheapsters then they could sell like hotcak
Re: (Score:2)
Also Amiga Emulators and MAME.
What a clever little thing.
The Ouya could be disruptive. Big time. (Score:5, Insightful)
I give Ouya a solid chance to disrupt console gaming and living-room computing on a totally new level.
The two simple facts that it is a) dirt cheap and b) anybody who has one can develop for it, carries some hefty oomph that is probably already making some Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo execs getting nervous as we speak. I say it is no coincidence that Nintendo has anounced their Wii U Devkit will be free of charge for anybody who wants one.
If this baby gains critical mass, which I hope and expect it will, it could very well become the best selling piece of electronics hardware in history. Bulk produce the Ouya beyond a few million pieces and you have a console with solid general purpose computing capabilities that most of earths population can afford. If that isn't killer potential, I don't know what is.
My 2 cents.
Sturgeon's law: 90% of games are crap (Score:5, Insightful)
anybody who has one can develop for it
Which I'm told will lead to over 90 percent of releases being crap [tvtropes.org], just like on Android and iOS. The North American video game market went into a recession in 1983 because too many companies were making crappy video games. When introducing the NES in the fourth quarter of 1985, Nintendo needed some way to reassure toy retailers that 90 percent of shelf space wouldn't be occupied by exactly what Theodore Sturgeon predicted, and the lockout chip was Nintendo's way of doing this.
On the one hand, Ouya has no disc slot and is thus not limited by physical shelf space. On the other hand, it's still limited by screen space above the fold of the list of games in each genre.
Re:Sturgeon's law: 90% of games are crap (Score:4, Informative)
On the one hand, Ouya has no disc slot and is thus not limited by physical shelf space. On the other hand, it's still limited by screen space above the fold of the list of games in each genre.
Order by popularity and the problem will mostly sort itself out, like you say over 90 percent of the releases on Android and iOS are crap but 99 percent of the buyers don't see them. They see Angry Birds and whatever else is in the top 100 or so per category, what's featured you can have a process for or they've been reading some game review and actually look for something that's not crap. Good luck "bootstrapping" the Ouya market though, it's a classic chicken and egg situation where you either need to bring a lot of heavy hitting games or a rabid following of fans. Otherwise this could be another Firefly, the fans love it but most people don't want it.
Re: (Score:2)
what's featured you can have a process for or they've been reading some game review and actually look for something that's not crap.
I'd be interested to see what review process they have to find what to feature. Because if the selection in "featured new releases" is crap, users' opinion of the whole selection will be crap.
it's a classic chicken and egg situation where you either need to bring a lot of heavy hitting games or a rabid following of fans.
Yeah, I'd be interested to see how they plan to keep it from being another GP2X or Media Center PC: something that isn't commercially successful except among a statistically insignificant user base.
Otherwise this could be another Firefly, the fans love it but most people don't want it.
I assume you're talking about Mutant Enemy [wikipedia.org], not Owl City [wikipedia.org] or Rammstein [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I think you've nailed it - the lack of any sort of quality control will cause this thing to flame out pretty quickly. The hardware also strikes me as ridiculously anemic.
However, I could see both Apple and Amazon releasing similar devices, based on Apple's iOS and Amazon's customized version of Android respectively, and tied to their existing online stores. They could sign deals with top developers to produce software - software that could also run on their tablets in theory - and act as a filter to keep
Re: (Score:3)
The hardware also strikes me as ridiculously anemic.
More so than the Wii U with its three PowerPC G3 cores clocked at less than twice the Wii's 729 MHz? (See yesterday's Slashdot story [slashdot.org].)
Re: (Score:2)
90% of releases on all platforms are crap.
The question is whether the 10% of good releases will actually be worth it to bother, or even if it's easy enough to find them in the first place (given how bad the new Playstation Store is, I find it amazing that anyone buys games from there at all, let alone manages to find decent games).
Re: (Score:2)
A) If this were the only criteria, then Sony, Mircosoft, and Nintendo would have already been replaced by the existing cheap products that are already on the market. This is obviously better than what's come before it, but I doubt it's going to change much.
B) This assumes that first of all, a whole lot of people are going to be excited to develop for it. Most who buy it won't do any development at all. Second it assumes that 95% of the stuff that actually does get developed for this won't be
Re: (Score:1)
If this baby gains critical mass, which I hope and expect it will, it could very well become the best selling piece of electronics hardware in history. Bulk produce the Ouya beyond a few million pieces and you have a console with solid general purpose computing capabilities that most of earths population can afford. If that isn't killer potential, I don't know what is.
Then the patent infringement law suits will pour in and kill the product.
Re: (Score:2)
If this baby gains critical mass, which I hope and expect it will
It won't.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Know, they don't
I'm trying to work out if this is a typo, or a clever pun.
Either way, it works!
Re: (Score:1)
the average console player is proud of the fact he plugged a cable into a box, development is a sideshow, not a feature
Re: (Score:2)
neat (Score:3)
This thing sounds great. Especially if it can run XBMC... that would make it incredibly useful. But their site is in terrible need of a FAQ.
Can it decode x264?
Can it play full 1080p video?
can you use multiple controllers?
Can you have peripherals? Specifically a remote?
Does it have a network connection? Wifi?
Re:neat (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, standard files are hardware decrypted.
Yes.
Yes.
Not sure, how do you want to connect it? It does have an Infrared sensor and bluetooth. A remote is sold separately (which I presume works on IR, but not if it is hackable).
Yes, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth are build-in.
Re: (Score:2)
Suddenly I am very interested. A cheap HTPC/streaming solution would be perfect for my needs. The fact that I could load android games (and emulators!) on it would just be gravy.
Re: (Score:2)
x264? Unsure.
1080p? Yes.
multiple controllers? Yes.
peripherals? Most likely anything supported by Android, but unsure.
Network? Wifi, Bluetooth, Ethernet.
Re: (Score:2)
x264 is an encoder, not an actual format.
I still don't understand why the scene puts it in their file names.
"Encoded with x264" as a mark of quality (Score:2)
I still don't understand why the scene puts [the name of a particular AVC encoder] in their file names.
For the same reason that MP3 scene releases may have had "LAME" in the file name: to ensure listeners that a group's encode wasn't done with some crappy encoder like Xing or BladeEnc, so as not to draw a nuke and proper later.
Re: (Score:2)
That kind of information should be in the file metadata. It could also just be mentioned in the NFO.
Re: (Score:2)
It's hard to read the file metadata before downloading a file.
Re: (Score:3)
A Raspberry Pi can.
Kit vs. ready to run (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's important... but what's more important to me is this thing is DESIGNED to do what I want to do with it. I've been doing the HTPC thing since the 90s, when all I had was a very expensive soundcard with a digital channel to my stereo. All this time it's evolved and served me well. But the fact of the matter is my HTPC is by far the most powerful PC in my house now. More processing power, more memory, better video card, everything. I'm hardly utilizing it's power, but that's what you need when you're do
Re: (Score:2)
What a name... (Score:1)
I'd like to buy a semivowel (Score:2)
Call it trolling if you want, but seriously... where the hell are the damn consonants?
You could say the same thing about "Wii". Both Y and W are semivowels [wikipedia.org]. On the other hand, you could look at "PS2" and "PSP" and ask where the vowels are. Or you could look at the Xbox 360 and see where Microsoft allegedly stole the name [wikia.com].
Do you need to take a Wii Wii? (Score:2)
Yet, Wii, PS2, PSP and XBOX are not stupid fucking names, like Ouya.
Ouya does not mean urine in the dominant language of Western popular culture. Wii does.
Ouya? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
crap, I want a drink now...
English muthafscka do you speak it? (Score:2)
"There is a surprise" or "there are some surprises" but never "there is some."
Re: (Score:1)
"There is a surprise" or "there are some surprises" but never "there is some."
There is some gentleman at the door carrying a violin case. He says he wishes to speak with you regarding some finer points of grammar.
Re:English muthafscka do you speak it? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, there is some truth in what you say.
Re: (Score:1)
Ah correct, the exception of course is when using a mass noun, and truth is one of those wierd little words that can be a mass noun or a counting noun.
The blurbage still doesnt work.
Re: (Score:2)
"There is a surprise" or "there are some surprises" but never "there is some."
Since I feel it's fair to grammar-nazi a grammar-nazi:
Actually, surprise [oxforddictionaries.com] can be used a mass noun [wikipedia.org], which makes the usage correct, even if it's a bit awkward. AC above is also correct in pointing out that even if used as a countable noun, "some surprise" is not wrong either. ("That was some surprise!")
Not to mention, that wasn't a sentence.
Final specs of the controller? (Score:2)
Have they published final specs for the controller? Last I checked it lacked start/select buttons and featured an unnecessary awkward button labeling and it wasn't clear how the trigger would be setup. Has any of that changed?
Re: (Score:2)