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Android Games Hardware

Ouya Consoles Will Start Shipping On December 28th 121

Posted by timothy from the did-you-bet-correctly? dept.
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."
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Ouya Consoles Will Start Shipping On December 28th More

Ouya Consoles Will Start Shipping On December 28th

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  • What rare drops means (Score:5, Funny)

    by GoodNewsJimDotCom ( 2244874 ) on Friday November 30, 2012 @08:16PM (#42150195)
    While it happens less that uncommonly, we did drop your console onto the floor. They won't work for average users, but we think that due to being developers, you could fix them. Thanks.

    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)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday November 30, 2012 @08:51PM (#42150601) Homepage Journal

      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.

    • My bet is on "Hand-crafted workmanship! (we had to manually solder extra jumper wires in these units to fix early production bugs)"

      • My bet is on "Hand-crafted workmanship! (we had to manually solder extra jumper wires in these units to fix early production bugs)"

        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..."

  • 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?

  • The Ouya could be disruptive. Big time. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Friday November 30, 2012 @08:48PM (#42150567)

    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)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday November 30, 2012 @09:17PM (#42150859) Homepage Journal

      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)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday November 30, 2012 @09:36PM (#42150987) Homepage

        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)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          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)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          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 r

      • 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

      • 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).

    • Longshot.

      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)

      by orient ( 535927 )

      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)

      by Yunzil ( 181064 )

      If this baby gains critical mass, which I hope and expect it will

      It won't.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      the average console player is proud of the fact he plugged a cable into a box, development is a sideshow, not a feature

    • You'll be able to buy a Wii Mini for $99 soon if rumours are true, and you can get a $99 Xbox 360 with loads of strings attached. The price point is meaningless. Brand is everything. There are already dozens of handheld Android gaming devices available for peanuts but none of them has reached any kind of critical mass. The Dingoo A320, a proprietary non-Android device (which can run Linux), has sold over a million units and is a big deal still in handheld emulation circles - I doubt even a fraction of the S

  • neat (Score:3)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Friday November 30, 2012 @08:53PM (#42150635)

    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)

      by ThatsMyNick ( 2004126 ) on Friday November 30, 2012 @09:04PM (#42150737)

      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.

      • 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)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      x264? Unsure.
      1080p? Yes.
      multiple controllers? Yes.
      peripherals? Most likely anything supported by Android, but unsure.
      Network? Wifi, Bluetooth, Ethernet.

    • x264 is an encoder, not an actual format.
      I still don't understand why the scene puts it in their file names.

      • 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.

    • A Raspberry Pi can.

      • Does the Raspberry Pi ship with a gamepad or even a standard case? Perhaps the advantage of the Ouya is that it comes "ready to run": already in a case, with a gamepad, and with a download store installed. It's like the difference between an R/C plane kit [philshobbyshop.com] and a ready-to-fly plane [philshobbyshop.com].

        • 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

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Call it trolling if you want, but seriously... where the hell are the damn consonants? All that's in there is that "Y" character that sometimes plays the part of a consonant on weekends.
  • Big deal, let me know when they get to the Ouzo consoles.

  • There is some surprise for developers with this console.

    "There is a surprise" or "there are some surprises" but never "there is some."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There is some surprise for developers with this console.

      "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)

      by White Flame ( 1074973 ) on Saturday December 01, 2012 @01:38AM (#42152429)

      Yes, there is some truth in what you say.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Arker ( 91948 )

        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.

    • There is some surprise for developers with this console.

      "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.

  • 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?

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