OUYA Console Starts Shipping To Kickstarter Backers 110
First time accepted submitter Patch86 writes "The team behind the Android-based OUYA games console have announced last week that they have begun shipping their first consoles. As the console originated as a Kickstarter project the first consoles will be shipped to backers; the console is due to be released for general sale for the 4th of June with a $99 price tag. As the BBC notes, this is the first of a series of major new entrants into the games console market, with others on the horizon including fellow Kickstarter Android project Gamestick, Nvidia's CES surprise Project Shield, and of course Valve's 'Steambox.'"
what a scam... (Score:0, Interesting)
I'm still waiting for my ouya to ship and I was a kickstarter backer. Apprently they missed the DELIVERY estimate of march 28. They also only shipped about 250 units to hand picked high profile people for review while everyone else gets the shaft. They've had my money for a long time now, other people have ouya, where's mine? They have horrible communication and leave everyone in the dark unless they donate thousands of dollars. We started their company and they can't even email us back when we send an inquiry as to what is going on with our units. Horrible company. Horrible PR. Horrible console because it REQUIRES a credit card to use. just bad. very disapointed. It'll be an emulator box for me, that's about it.
Re:Ouya Review (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just allow games to be sold normally?
Every game is free to download, but then dumps on your head a load of nags, pop-ups, and pleas for upgrades or in-app purchases â" some games are $4.99, some are $15.99, others just constantly implore you to donate $.99 so the developer can have a beer. Worst of all, it makes buying things impossibly easy â" you enter a credit card when first setting up your Ouya, and there are often no confirmation boxes or checks against you spending thousands of dollars. Oh, you hit Upgrade because it's right next to Play and the controller's laggy? Perfect. Thanks for your money.
Re:The potential is there... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with Steambox is going to be at least one of getting studios to port to Linux. It's not hard, but it does have a bunch of unknows to many of the studios regarding development effort and support- which is part of why they kept from doing Linux titles as much as anything else.
If Valve opts for something ARM-centric (Possibly a Cortex-A54 based device?? With the right GPU, it'd be in the "next-gen" space... Of course you could do an X86 machine and reach for the high-end; the problem there is expense and thermal profile on the console...) it's going to have a double problem in that ARM also adds a few additional rules to coding that X86 coding will let you slide on.
Ah, but it's got LOADS of potential as far as I'm concerned... I port games to Linux from Windows for studios...and I know the other gotchas there. >:-D
The Ouya does as well. NDK coding's not QUITE the same as Linux coding... However, I might have answers there as well...just not there enough to announce them yet.
The value of entry barriers (Score:4, Interesting)
The financial barriers to entry are disappearing, and I think that's wonderful.
In a comment to the last Steam box story, CronoCloud explained to me [slashdot.org] that after the North American video game recession of 1983, console makers have traditionally used financial barriers to entry as a way to sort out original, entertaining games from the sort of me-too crap that was plaguing the Atari 2600. Ability to surmount barriers to entry has been correlated with ability to produce a game that isn't a "hello world" or a clone of some 1980s arcade game.