Ouya Performance Not Particularly Exciting 305
hypnosec writes "Results of recent benchmark tests reveal that Ouya is not up to the mark and there are over 70 other ARM devices that perform better than the gaming console. Futuremark, which is known for its benchmarks like 3DMark and PCMark, benchmarked mobile devices and the Tegra 3 powered Ouya has been ranked 73rd."
Of course, most of the those devices cost a lot more than $100 without carrier subsidies.
It's about content not specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
As the early Nintendo days can attest.
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
800,000 Applications (Score:3, Informative)
This. Sadly, I personally don't think that Ouya content is going to be able to carry it though.
Except right now even before launch it has potentially more games than xbox360, ps3; and wii combined...and cheap too, most under a dollar. Everything from throwaway games to 20hr RPG's, Lets be honest most modern game engines work on Android. In fact the only problem it has is making out the quality from the...not so quality
Re:800,000 Applications (Score:4, Interesting)
Big point missed: it's supposidly built to run XBMC really well. It does have multiple purposes.
Re:800,000 Applications (Score:5, Insightful)
This could well be very true. I backed it on Kickstarter precisely because I wanted a low power ARM-based 1080p media device that was more flexible than offerings from Sony, MS, Nintendo. Had no real interest in it personally as a gaming console.
That said... I read TFA. It completely misses the point. Sure, because brand new bleeding edge phones have higher performance, Ouya (at #70) is a loser. Good grief. It is a certainty that there will be between 100 and 1000 PCs (and Macs) of varying configurations from reasonable manufacturers that will exceed the PS4 and Xbox 720 when they are released (at #101-#1001). (at octo-core 1.6 GHz Jag and roughly half the performance of a 670 video card it won't be difficult). Does that mean that these consoles are failures and Sony and MS should give up?
Of course not. They will have defined a stable platform that is "good enough" for some years of gaming, along with interfaces to enable that.
Ditto, potentially, Ouya.
Will Ouya succeed? I've no idea, but the raw power of the console is unlikely to be a material issue at this point.
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Re:800,000 Applications (Score:4, Informative)
This could well be very true. I backed it on Kickstarter precisely because I wanted a low power ARM-based 1080p media device that was more flexible than offerings from Sony, MS, Nintendo. Had no real interest in it personally as a gaming console.
That said... I read TFA. It completely misses the point. Sure, because brand new bleeding edge phones have higher performance, Ouya (at #70) is a loser. Good grief. It is a certainty that there will be between 100 and 1000 PCs (and Macs) of varying configurations from reasonable manufacturers that will exceed the PS4 and Xbox 720 when they are released (at #101-#1001). (at octo-core 1.6 GHz Jag and roughly half the performance of a 670 video card it won't be difficult). Does that mean that these consoles are failures and Sony and MS should give up?
Of course not. They will have defined a stable platform that is "good enough" for some years of gaming, along with interfaces to enable that.
Ditto, potentially, Ouya.
Will Ouya succeed? I've no idea, but the raw power of the console is unlikely to be a material issue at this point.
And the Ouya software still is entirely beta and will be for quite some time.
As anybody can attest: Android devices with not optimised/slimmed down system software can bevery sluggish. They have been performance testing at the wrong time and that is dishonest.
Also this hardly is news since Tegra3 is yesterdays news and has been surpassed for quite some time. Yet there are not many games that take it really to the edge. It's like claiming that the Geforce 680 has been surpassed by the latest ATI offering. That'd be interesting but of no particular value since nearly no games under normal circumstances strain either of them.
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A Stable platform is indeed one of the secrets of Games console success. But a stable platform is only worth anything if a has a significant number of users.
Every failed games console had a stable platform. It just didn't have enough users.
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Big point missed: it's supposidly built to run XBMC really well. It does have multiple purposes.
And that is why I ordered one. XBMC runs amazingly well on my Tegra 3 tablet; I want a little Android box that can hide behind my TV and run XBMC. Bonus for a dedicated "remote" (and navigating XBMC with a game controller is a pleasure.) Gaming is certainly a feature, but I already have a PC for that.
Re:800,000 Applications (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact the only problem it has is making out the quality from the...not so quality
Which is not a problem we should dismiss out of hand. The exact same problem killed Atari (and the American video game market with it [wikipedia.org]) back in the 80s. When the NES was introduced, Nintendo had some pretty strict quality/quantity control [wikipedia.org] to prevent that from happening again, as well as its own magazine to inform gamers about what was available. Perhaps aggregate reviews on the internet will fulfill the same function today.
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Except right now even before launch it has potentially more games than xbox360, ps3; and wii combined...and cheap too, most under a dollar. Everything from throwaway games to 20hr RPG's, Lets be honest most modern game engines work on Android. In fact the only problem it has is making out the quality from the...not so quality
However, people who want to play Android games will play them on their Android phones (if they have one). If not, Angry Birds (and its ilk) are likely available on their current phone platform. What you are missing is that people buy console games to play console-type games: 20+ hours of gameplay, with detailed story lines, excellent graphics, good music (don't underestimate the impact of this), and reasonable level of control.
Now, I agree that there are some Android games that could do well - Team 17's W
The rise of the Android Console (Score:3)
However, people who want to play Android games will play them on their Android phones (if they have one)
Absolutely, and their tablets too. Ignoring the fact that they in themselves are pretty good game platforms. I have owned a Android console from Sony over 18Months http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play [wikipedia.org]. Right now the Ouya is not the only successful kick-starter Android console http://gamestick.tv/ [gamestick.tv] or that there are gaming tablets from Archos http://www.archos.com/products/themed/gamepad/index.html?country=us&lang=en#a [archos.com] Wikipad’s and 7-inch Android gaming tablet called Wikipad http://www.wikipad. [wikipad.com]
Re:800,000 Applications (Score:4, Insightful)
With the exception of Skyrim, very few (if any) games have actually delivered more than 10 solid hours of gameplay, much less 20. If you can name me 5 games from this list [wikipedia.org] that are both a console game and 20+ hours of gameplay, I'd be really surprised.
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I've stopped buying AAA games. They are not good value for money and I will rather pick them up in a sale together with all DLC if at all.
There are 200 games in my Steam library. Only few of them have 60 hrs+ play time on them. One being Skyrim(most of which was spent trying
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However, for sake of argument, let's just pretend that potential games somehow become real games (by magic, we must assume). Then what? Will people want to run them on a slow console? Why? Because it's $99?
Of course! :-)
Or you expect me to waste 600USD on a state of the art console to play these cheap games? ;-)
OUYA will not steal high end console's market. OUYA will succeed only if a latent low profile gaming market is out there, waiting to be discovered and exploited, I mean, explored. :-)
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Despite your negativity, you've found the mark. The gamble is that there are a lot of people who play Plants vs Zombies, Angry Birds, Mario* and other games that work just fine on a Tegra-3. $100 in, and $50 for 20 games, or $300 in and $50 per game. That cost point is absolutely killer.
Case and point: My Mom outspent me on gaming last year. She discovered Big Fish and spent $200 in $6 games. The market you mentioned exists.
If they can expl[oit]ore it they'll win. I like my Ouya so far, the controlle
Re:800,000 Applications (Score:5, Informative)
However, for sake of argument, let's just pretend that potential games somehow become real games (by magic, we must assume). Then what? Will people want to run them on a slow console? Why? Because it's $99?
Of course! :-)
Or you expect me to waste 600USD on a state of the art console to play these cheap games? ;-)
OUYA will not steal high end console's market. OUYA will succeed only if a latent low profile gaming market is out there, waiting to be discovered and exploited, I mean, explored. :-)
Not only that, but you're paying through the nose for increasingly locked-down consoles designed with the EA mentality of bleeding your bank account dry while you play. Personally I'm done with Nintendo/Sony/MS consoles and their push to lock you into some sort of on-line somethingaverse where you spend Itchy and Scratchy money on stuff that should have been included with the $60 game that is locked to your specific console for no justifiable reason. And as someone that travels between countries, don't get me started on region locking and the "helpful feature" of switching to the language of whatever country your IP address originated from. I don't care about on-line multiplayer, I don't want to create an avatar, I'm not interested in being called a faggot by some preteen with too much free time, I don't want to have to sign in to a server to play a single player game, and I will only tolerate DRM that is as unobtrusive as Steam... and by that I mean I'm willing to pay because Steam is actually easier than pirating.
Not even remotely true (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, the rule with games available on Android...is that they're almost all terrible. There are very few exceptions.
Except that is not even remotely true, having owned a Android game console for over 18 months, its my primary source of gaming, and the costs are cheap too. Android is becoming the primary gaming platform.
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Android is becoming the primary gaming platform.
Christ, and I thought Apple fanboys were out of touch with reality...
Console Snobbery (Score:4, Insightful)
Face it, you can't have great, immersive, polished, professional-quality games for $2.99
Ignoring the fact that you have not looked at Google Play recently :) Lets spend a little time looking at costs.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-60-dollar-video-game.html [latimes.com]
These figures are rough and back in 2010 by Steve Perlman, founder of OnLive That bring the cost of a video game down to $27. For your $2.99 Andoird game the developers pay $25 for registration to distribute on the Google Play Store. Application developers receive 70 percent of the application price...leaving you with $2.09
A quick look at the console market http://www.vgchartz.com/ [vgchartz.com] and consoles average about 80M potential customers at the end of a consoles useful life. Android is Heading towards 1Billion activations, and continue to grow [currently only 12.5x larger than Consoles].
I am making no claims that more money can be made from Android games than tradition console gaming, but comparing on total selling price alone is foolish when Android market is massive and continues to growl; there is no second hand market; risks are smaller; development costs cheaper; Customers buy more games; Alternative revenue streams.
That is ignoring the fact that your favourite engine spits out binaries that will work on a plethora of platforms...Look at Unity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine) [wikipedia.org]
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But the GP has a point. Not the one he is making but a similar one. It is very, very hard to find good games on Google Play. They are buried underneath fart apps and cow-clickers. Google Play has no information whatsoever on controller support. You basically get buried under an avalanche of crap.
If you compare it to Steam then it is not very good.
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Compare and contrast Ouja and Ouya.
Successes, failures, popularity,cost
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There's always time for the next version of the Ouya.
I imagine that they'll pay attention to feedback so they know which areas to beef up.
Do you think they were using Gamecube grade hardware in the NES?
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Building a sturdy controller is an art and fiendishly expensive. You can only make that up in numbers. And even if you built a very good controller it still wouldn't be good for everybody since hands vary quite a lot in
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As the early Nintendo days can attest.
The difference was in the early days the market wasn't so competitive (saturated.)
Why choose one of the two when you can have both content _and_ hardware?
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:4, Insightful)
One : Because hardware tends to kill content.
Devs these days are more concerned about rendering amazing graphics, and epic cut scenes, and *hey put down the controller you're screwing up all my hard work... just sit there and watch the awesome happen. When the cutscene is over you can walk down the hallway to the next cutscene.* Video games used to be a method to tell stories, now all the time and budget for narrative has gone by the wayside in order to cram more pixels into each frame. Plus, there's only so much real estate on physical media. Bluray is, what, 25 - 50 GB. And the aforementioned cut scenes take a lot of room, so instead of 50+ hour epics, we get a lot of 10-hour quickies, for the same price. (just plowed through dishonored over the weekend, hard mode, "Clean Hands," 9 hours)
And two : Because right now, that really isn't a choice.
XBox and PS3 are mostly focused on annual franchises that are near sure-fire hits : Battlefield, Modern Warfare, Call of Duty, Madden, FIFA, Halo, etc. Release a new game each year with Title n+1, same graphics, add a few bells and whistles, maybe a new map or two, and you're printing money. WiiU has a grand total of like 2 games that aren't Dance or Party games (or dance-party games)
Asking for both is even less of an option when you factor in the $100 mark. Less than 1/3 the price of a current iPod Touch. This is a toy, at the moment. A playground for developers to see what they can do, and for people to run old emulators, XBMC or whatever else they can think up. If it catches on, and sw devs enjoy it, maybe it'll pick up steam and release a more powerful version... Time will tell. At the very least, it's nice to see someone else trying.
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Devs these days are more concerned about rendering amazing graphics, and epic cut scenes, and *hey put down the controller you're screwing up all my hard work... just sit there and watch the awesome happen. When the cutscene is over you can walk down the hallway to the next cutscene.* Video games used to be a method to tell stories, now all the time and budget for narrative has gone by the wayside in order to cram more pixels into each frame. Plus, there's only so much real estate on physical media. Bluray is, what, 25 - 50 GB. And the aforementioned cut scenes take a lot of room, so instead of 50+ hour epics, we get a lot of 10-hour quickies, for the same price. (just plowed through dishonored over the weekend, hard mode, "Clean Hands," 9 hours)
yes yes, everything these days is worse than whatever you had (unspecified) in your childhood, everything kids have these days is mindless and derivative, herp derp.
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And let's not talk about the latest murder simulator with attached Sim City knockoff and a naval warfare simulator thrown in for good measure. Those tend to be not very go
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:4, Insightful)
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and in terms of garbage games, the PS2 is the king.
i mean how many japanese date games can you have (hint: over half their catalog, or about 10000 games is exactly that)
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> Devs these days are more concerned about rendering amazing graphics, and epic cut scenes
Oblg. FPS map design: 1993 vs 2010
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17f0o4rihl081gif/original.gif [gawkerassets.com]
--
Games are META-Art. They combine music, graphics, design, and code. All which are a combination of Science and Art.
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As the early Nintendo days can attest.
We always hear about the stifling of the industry because game developers are going after the lowest common denominator in the current crop of consoles rather than exploiting hardware advancements, Ouya could well do the same in the Android game space. It's not all about graphics but for a non-portable gaming device you want it to be fairly capable.
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:4, Insightful)
Early Nintendo days? For the first half of its history Nintendo hardware generally outclassed its competitors. NES was a LOT better than than the Sega MasterSystem. SNES make Genesis look downright feeble, and despite their decision to stick to cartridges, N64 was far more capable than PSX or the Saturn from the standpoint of processing power. Heck even Gamecube was in many ways superior to PS2 and Xbox.
Nintendo's whole "quality content on inferior hardware" dance really only started on the Wii.
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Nope. The Master System had 8 times the video ram, 4 times the ram, and a much faster CPU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(third_generation)#Comparison [wikipedia.org]
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:5, Informative)
The Master System had 8 times the video ram
True, but that's because the NES was designed to use video ROM or RAM in the cartridge. Plug Videomation into your NES and there's more video RAM than the SMS. Tile animation effects, such as the spinning ? blocks and spinning coins in SMB3, could be made much more elaborate in NES games whose mapper chip supported paged video ROM.
4 times the ram
This I'll give you: NES games with a highly destructible environment (such as SMB3) needed to have extra working memory on the cartridge at $6000-$7FFF. But games with a battery save feature often got this for free, as they could dedicate about half a KiB to battery save and the rest to expanded working memory.
a much faster CPU
Let me guess: You fell for the megahertz myth in the Pentium 4 days. A 6502 CPU has about twice the IPC of a Z80.
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I know about IPC :) . I'll give you the 6502 was faster clock-per-clock than a Z80.
Sir, I take exception with that (Score:3)
As for your SNES, well it was kinda slow. Not like it ran at the same speed as a Colecovision but.. oh wait. It did. And Ranger X broke the color barrier. Heck, most SNES games didn't run base hardware. It's why cart loaders don't work well. [youtube.com]
You might be right about the N64, but it didn't help much when the carts where $70 a pop a y
Shows the (Score:2)
and as proof, I give you Fatal Fury Special running on the Sega Master System (Game Gear technically, but the hardware is identical) WITHOUT tonnes of custom mappers chips.
Fast forward to in-game graphics [youtube.com], and I see three strips: the background, the foreground, and the status bar. One thing you don't get in SMS or Game Gear games is vertical scrolling in games using a status bar like this. On both NES and SMS, a game can divide the screen into horizontal strips and scroll each one separately. On NES, each strip can be scrolled in all eight directions, but on SMS, strips can be scrolled only horizontally. Show me a driving game for SMS that actually has hills like Rad Rader f
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Low frame rate of Road Rash (Score:2)
That would be the SMS version of Road Rash
Look at the low frame rate because it has to do all the hill processing in software. Then compare it to the smoothness that is Rad Racer 2 [youtube.com].
World Grand Prix too
No hills. To get hills + high frame rate, you need vertical scrolling by the strip, something that among third-gen consoles, only Nintendoes.
And there's nothing even close to Space Harrier on the Nintendo.
Let's see: 3D Battles of Worldrunner [youtube.com], Tetra Star [youtube.com], Cosmic Epsilon [youtube.com]...
Or the dungeon animation in Phantasy Star.
I'll grant that that uses one of the strengths of the SMS: tile flipping combined with draw-time VRAM writing.
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You are trying to compare the N64 to the *Saturn*? The Saturn was 2 years older than the N64. You might as well compare the N64 to the Dreamcast, since there is a 2 year difference, there, too. Same with the SNES and the Genesis, the SNES was two years newer.
None of these comparisons mean much. The SEGA/Nintendo battles of the 80's/90's were about one company leapfrogging the other every couple years. Of course you can pick any two consoles and one has better specs, that was the point.
Re:It's about content not specs. (Score:4, Funny)
And no Oxford Comma, apparently.
SMS vs. NES (Score:3)
The SMS had more processing power, better graphics and sound.
Processing power was a wash, as Z80 is less efficient clock for clock than 6502. SMS had more color depth, more RAM, and ability to update name. The NES won on sound with an extra bass octave, more timbres for pulse wave instruments, and a digital sample playback channel, and it won on graphics with the ability to scroll a vertical split screen area.
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SMS won drastically on colors on screen (32 vs 16), sprite size, and palette limitations (most notably NES had fugly 4 color sprites while SMS could use 16) though, which were some of the major reasons most SMS games just looked better. Altered Beast is a pretty drastic example of the difference those factors that can make.
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fair enough, but consider that no games for Ouya will have dynamic shadows. That's because Tegra does not support shadow mapping
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It sure is. And the Ouya ain't got shit.
High for Tegra 3 Devices (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is far more interesting that it scored higher than the majority of other tegra 3 devices which cost far more. I never really expected it to be performance impressive by the time it shipped. It is running on a 1 year old chip.
Of course it is going to be outpaced by the newer devices.
Re:High for Tegra 3 Devices (Score:4, Insightful)
Content and Capabilities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Content and Capabilities (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also worth noting, just for the sake of balance, that '73d in benchmarks' is a close to meaningless figure, equivalent to declaring that a given computer with, say, an i5 CPU is "not even in the top hundred" because you can buy hundreds of distinct SKUs that have i7 CPUs.
On the benchmark page [futuremark.com] you can see that major swaths of the benchmark list are near duplicates.
The top 20-odd spots are "quad-core Krait 300 Adreno 320", with the bulk of the next 50 being "dual-core Krait 300 Adreno 320".
The oddballs are "2 GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2580 PowerVR SGX544MP2", Samsung's "Up to 1.7 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 Mali-T604" and one or two other minor variants.
It's actually pretty surprising how much variation their is(in at least one case a dual Krait benchmarked ahead of several quad Kraits, allegedly at the same clock speed, and the ASUS transformer with a slower Tegra3 benches ahead of the OUYA with a higher clocked and otherwise identical SoC); but there Just. Aren't. That. Many. SoCs at the high end of the market.
There are definitely faster chips(especially on the CPU side, Nvidia went a bit light on the CPU side on the theory, unsurprising for them, that GPU is what counts); but only a handful, just used in 70-odd devices.
This fact doesn't make the Tegra3 any faster in an absolute sense; but there aren't even enough SoCs on the market for something to meaningfully be '73d'
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It's also worth noting, just for the sake of balance, that '73d in benchmarks' is a close to meaningless figure, equivalent to declaring that a given computer with, say, an i5 CPU is "not even in the top hundred" because you can buy hundreds of distinct SKUs that have i7 CPUs.
It would be interesting to know more about futuremark scores. Antutu, the benchmark all the users use (and which is thus much more interesting than a futuremark score) will give a lower score to the same CPU and GPU with a higher resolution display because it runs all tests at full resolution, and the score is based on the frame rate.
Re:Content and Capabilities (Score:5, Insightful)
Software developers wanted to be paid to write software?
Those scoundrels!
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it might cause the big 3 console makers to reconsider drm and vendor lockdown.
That's driven by the publishers, and you can bet the ones that do drm already will go with some sort of lockdown, drm or internet-connected system for their ouya games to.
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...no that is just passing the buck.
Passing what buck? To whom? We see always-on DRM on PCs because it's the publishers, not the hardware makers, the console makers are only doing this to appease the content publishers. We see DRM on desktop Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, Playstation and Nintendo platforms as well so 'blame microsoft' is pretty ignorant.
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I guess it is Microsoft after all :) Seriously stop passing the blame.
I had no idea iOS, Playstation, Steam, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA, OSX, Mac, iTunes video (and quite frankly the list is virtually endless) were all Microsoft products, they all have DRM so I guess everything is microsoft and therefore we can blame them for everything!
Microsoft Hardware DRM (Score:2)
I guess everything is microsoft and therefore we can blame them for everything!
I think that is going a bit far Microsoft should receive blame for insisting on draconian DRM on its [not your] tablet, as well as draconian DRM within its software.
Hardware DRM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_restrictions#Windows_8 [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]
Trusted Computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]
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I think that is going a bit far Microsoft should receive blame for insisting on draconian DRM on its [not your] tablet
I didn't realize Microsoft owned my iPad or my Playstation, why do you believe they do?
Sony DRM free gaming console (Score:2)
yeah its not like sony or nintendo or apple or blizzard or ea or ubisoft has drm huh? its all microsoft!
Ironically in context of this article my playstation console phone is running a third party OS, and because its cool you can use up a playstation 3 controller on all playstation certified phones. I support open hardware and shun overreaching DRM. As for you thinking others acting badly makes you think its acceptable for your bad behaviour its not, the fact that Microsoft is the only one on the list that does this on a General Personal Computer with a monopoly status just makes them he worst offender.
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Check system requirements: PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 (Score:2)
Introducing the need to check system requirements
You already have to do that for PlayStation games. Games for the original PlayStation play on everything, but PlayStation 2 games won't play on an original PlayStation, nor will PlayStation 3 games play on a PlayStation 2 or 4. The store could be made to filter out Ouya 2 games unless all the components have been upgraded to at least Ouya 2 level.
Performance secondary to Ouya's goals. (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of the the new, popular indie games available aren't exactly taxing on system requirements. Granted some of them could stand a bit of optimization, but having a common framework and a fixed hardware target (exacly what the Ouya provides) really will help there.
I've got a nice overclock sandy bridge i5 and a high end video card in my gaming system. While I enjoy many of the newer A-list titles with all of their eye candy, I probably put a lot more gaming hours in to titles like minecraft (mostly mod packs like tekkit or FTB), binding of issac, don't starve, super meat boy, and a lot of others that can be had for a couple of bucks on steam.
While not the fastest thing in the world, I still think the ouya could put a lot of very good games in to the hands of eager players for a very good price. The big console makers miss the mark on indie titles, requiring way too much money for development and focusing way too heavily on monitization at the expense of gameplay.
Better than SNES or PSX (Score:4, Informative)
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I believe that's why they're having new games put in the sandbox until they're voted into the store proper.
Non-misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
The benchmark results show the OUYA (basically a $50 console bundled with a $50 controller) was faster than the HTC One S, which sells for $450 outside of a contract.
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Well, if you want to put it that way, the HTC One S is a $20 SOC bundled with 4G radio, a largish touch screen and lithium-ion battery.
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You can buy the controller separately for $50 (which is also roughly the price of a comparable PS3/360 controller as well). HTC doesn't sell 4G radios, touch screens and the like separately. And the SOC is not $20. Nor is the OUYA simply a SOC. It includes a case, cords, power supply, etc.
Not to mention the design cost. People often simply look at the part cost for an item, and assume that is what it costs to make a product. Phone companies get to re-use designs from one model to the next, where as the the
Nvidia in real trouble (Score:2, Interesting)
As AMD began its project, many years ago, to fuse first-class GPU circuits within the same chip as the CPU, Nvidia was forced to respond. Nvidia contemplated building an x86 processor of its own, but quickly dropped that idea to focus on building ARM SoC parts. Nvidia had but one goal- to be the number one high-end supplier of ARM solutions.
Now, many years later, we can see just how badly Nvidia has failed. Tegra 1 was a disaster. Tegra 2 and 3 were terribly late, and only gained sales when Nvidia was force
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Oh, and Windows IS irrelevant to the play there unless you're talking Microsoft. SERIOUSLY.
*NOBODY* will base an indie console on the competitors OS. You, sir, are an idiot.
Tegra a success (Score:3)
Now, many years later, we can see just how badly Nvidia has failed
I find ARM incredibly confusing. I understood PC CPU/GPU, and I am on the whole pretty knowledgeable. As informed as your post maybe. In my mind I can only name two really recognisable ARM brands!? Snapdragon[because it was everywhere] and Tegra...and I only associate one with graphics performance. I have to say brand goes a long way.
but if you think single platform games, on a vapourware machine costing twice as much as this console is somehow a threat to Nvidia Arm, its not. It might bring more affordable
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Great! Care to show us shipping silicon with all these awesome next-gen specs?
What's that? They don't exist? Marketers blow smoke up your ass? You don't say!
Seriously, you're missing the point here. Sure it's easy to imagine something faster and better but by the time you've designed the thing, prototyped it, worked out all the bugs, and had it manafactured it's two years later.
The tegra is here. It's available now, in quantity. It's popular and a lot of people have a lot of experience working with it. Nvid
so? (Score:4, Informative)
Did they use Gamecube quality hardware in the NES?
Give Ouya a break, it's a brand new console and it's only on its first generation.
Give the makers time to soak up some feedback on Ouya's weak points and the next version will probably be beefed up a bit.
Hardware in first Xbox (Score:2)
Did they use Gamecube quality hardware in the NES?
No, but Microsoft used roughly GameCube quality hardware in the first generation Xbox: essentially a Celeron 733 and a GeForce 3.
Open Console (Score:2)
No, but Microsoft used roughly GameCube quality hardware in the first generation Xbox: essentially a Celeron 733 and a GeForce 3.
In the context on this article a lot of us bought the original xbox, because of it being *relatively* open console. In the context of this article one of the killer features that people want is "Xbox Media Center"(XBMC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC [wikipedia.org]
NDK (Score:2)
the Ouya should offer superior backwards compatibility over multiple generations of the console, as well as being easy to port to the PC and other platforms (granted being Java based could limit the games somewhat).
Only event handling needs to be in Java. The actual game can use the NDK. Besides, ports to the PC can use Java for PC, just as Minecraft uses Java for PC.
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You can even do the event handling without touching Java:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NativeActivity.html [android.com]
Too much made of this . . . (Score:2)
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What kind of idiot would say the Ouya is a bad machine because 70 machines with the more powerful chipset get a better benchmark. Isn't the Ouya using a T33? They should have compared it to a TF700. And even then they should still point out that the Ouya software still is in beta for a couple of
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Many of those devices are also self contained computers with everything you need to use them included at that price. Not making a dumb comparison, just pointing out that there are flaws in the reasoning behind the last sentence of TFS.
So you're saying that a much different device at a much different price point has much different performance?
Re: (Score:2)
It's about 1/2 the performance of the top rate device, but I somehow feel that it's probably running a less overhead than a phone has to.
Funny thing about 3dmark though... it doesn't score my PC very high, yet I play just about everything at 1920x1080 ultra/high settings with no lag and I'm not running an elegant cooling solution, so basically... in short... I think WEI has more merit.
Re:And... and... (Score:2)
Devices you'd want to have for other reasons. I have a smartphone already. I need a cellphone for my job, and a smartphone is really convenient for it. So I have one. Well if it is something I'm already going to buy, then it really isn't such a big deal to have a good one.
That's the issue. Ouya doesn't compete with smartphones, it competes with consoles. It has to put up a good showing against what Nintendo, MS, and Sony offer. I won't get one to replace my smartphone because it is not a phone, nor does it
Re:And... and... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ouya competes with non-hyped Android sticks. I just got $50 MK808B and Neo G4 ($75) and X5 ($100, but more I/O) sticks that I'm setting up to do Skype, Internet, email... and games... for friends and family. Dual-core A9, 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash, 2x or 3xUSB, BT, Wifi, Android 4.1 (4.2 on the way), SD slot, HDMI (and SPDIF for the X5)... and the full Android PlayStore,which Ouya and GameStick don't offer.
Add a $50 gamepad (a really good one, xbox or DualShock), any old keyboard and mouse, or a Logitech K400 if you want to get fancy, and you get something that can play almost as well as the Ouya/Gamestick, and do a whole lot more thanks to the PlayStore.
There aren't a whole lot of games that support gamepads or kb+ms, and quite a few games won't run at all because of lack of touch/accelerometer/gyroscope, and the portrait mode... but there are still quite a few good games, a whole bunch of emulators... and this is a lot more than what the OuyaSticks have right now. And there's a good chance that OuyaStick games will find their way to the PlayStore, too, devs would be crazy not to port them: very little extra work, a way bigger market.
I think it all comes down to the games: if Ouya or GameStick not only catch up to the PlayStore but snag good, exclusive games, it might be worth pay as much for them as for a true Android device, in spite of Ouya/GameStick being as expensive, more limited, and having bad controllers.
And quad-cores are on the way for less than $100.
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The price of a controller (Score:2)
Neo G4 ($75) [...] Add a $50 gamepad (a really good one, xbox or DualShock)
And you've already surpassed the price of an Ouya console.
And there's a good chance that OuyaStick games will find their way to the PlayStore, too, devs would be crazy not to port them: very little extra work, a way bigger market.
I doubt that the majority of smartphone users are willing to buy and carry an Xbox 360 controller or a Dual Shock 3 controller. So you have to somehow find a usable mapping for your game controls onto the touch screen. How would you play a game like Mega Man X on a touch screen? I tried playing NES games in an NES emulator for Android on my Nexus 7 tablet, and my thumbs kept missing the buttons because unlike a physical gamepad, a flat sheet of glass
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Speaking of price comparisons:
Ouya: $99
Samsung Galaxy S3: $699
what'd the author of TFA expect? Something for nothing?
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S3 doesn't have controllers (Score:2)
A big part of the Ouya is the proper gaming controllers...
Re:And... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And... (Score:4, Insightful)
The raw part cost of a smartphone SoC is a tiny portion of the bill of materials (BOM), maybe 10-15%. CPU is maybe $30 at the very high end? So for a box like the OUYA where the CPU is probably the biggest cost and they don't have to worry about a display, camera, battery, cellular radios, or massive amounts of storage, they probably could have sprung for a Snapdragon 600 or Tegra 4. Only thing is it would have delayed the product by 6 months since those chips are in high demand from smartphone OEMs.
Take a look at this cost breakdown analysis of the GS4: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-S4-Carries-236-Bill-of-Materials-IHS-iSuppli-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx [isuppli.com] $236 worth of parts selling for $699 just shows you how things are roughly priced (granted, MSRP - BOM != profit, but Samsung is in a pretty good position). Also you'll learn the biggest conspiracy of smartphones ever: it does NOT cost $100 to go from 16GB NAND to 32GB, or 32->64, or 64->128.
Yes, but what you're forgetting about is the opportunity cost. If you can make a $100 device that competes equally with a $300 device simply by lowering your profit margin, that's not the whole picture. To design and start producing that device, you need funding. That capital typically comes from people who want a return on their investment, and lower risk. The smaller your profit margin, the closer you are to not being profitable at all if you miscalculated, incorrectly estimated, or failed to account for something. And even if you hit exactly your intended margin, you still end up providing a lower return on investment than if you had charged more...or, in this case, if you lower the hardware costs. Also, keep in mind that a $5 hardware cost difference matters less, profit-wise, on a $300 device than it does on a $100 device.
Hardware isn't designed and built in a vacuum; these things happen in the context of a business, as well as in the context of an entire industry.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.geekbuying.com/item/MK808B-Dual-Core-Android-4-1-Jelly-Bean-TV-BOX-RK3066-Cortex-A9-1GB-RAM-8GB-ROM-Mini-PC-TV-Box---Black-313213.html [geekbuying.com]
Add a brand-name controller, you're all set.
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http://www.laptopmag.com/review/stick-computers/android-mini-pc-rk3066.aspx [laptopmag.com]
rk3066 based android minipc $55, ranked 2 places Higher than Ouya on TFAs 3dmark list.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
The OUYA is a self-contained computer. It is only missing a display.
You also have to consider that an OUYA with a controller is $100, and that a controller by itself is $50. So this is basically a $50 self-contained computer. I expect the performance to match/or exceed that of other $50 self-contained computers.
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The PS Vita has a lot of good games, assuming you like japanese games.
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The PS Vita has a lot of good games, assuming you like japanese games.
Japanese only? PS Vita has lots of gold classics euro games from the PS1, like this amazing racer I've once played, but could not find anywhere anymore.., it's on Vita! Comes with a great sountrack from the Scene's legend Blazer (Olof G) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ulV0Wa3r_Q [youtube.com]
You can look through the games (Score:2)
Google play https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/topselling_paid_game?start=0&num=24 [google.com] has a list of best selling games which is as good a place as any to start, and Android has great games. Ravensword: Shadowlands is a great place to get into Android Gaming.
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I don't know if it will run well; but running 'better' than a single-core CPU built on an older design and running at less than half the clock speed, with half the RAM, should be essentially automatic.
Given that all these little things have hardware decoders, I suspect that actual video decode(for mutually supported codecs) will be close enough to be irrelevant(unless a terribly slow storage bus is messing with things somewhere); but XBMC interface/overlay/widgets will probably appreciate the extra room...
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I don't know if it will run well; but running 'better' than a single-core CPU built on an older design and running at less than half the clock speed, with half the RAM, should be essentially automatic.
How well XBMC supports your platform is highly relevant. In theory the RK3066 is a great place to run XBMC but in practice the video acceleration is almost nonexistent and your best hope is that your vendor will release a version which launches the external player.
Re: (Score:3)
Price is not a valid comparison.
The most expensive parts of a phone are not part of the Ouya. No screen, no battery, no cell radio.
The Ouya console has chosen a lack-luster SoC. If they chose a PowerVR554, an Adreno225/320 or even a Mati-T604 SoC I doubt it would have been more than a few dollars difference.