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http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/tech...g-about-876224
the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ouyatop20Forget the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii -- the game machine everyone is talking about today is the Ouya.
If you haven't heard about Ouya, that's because it doesn't, technically, exist as anything but a prototype yet. But it looks like it won't be long before the silver and black cube designed to deliver games to your television will be made available to the public -- for $99.
That is, Ouya's creators have, in a matter of two days, raised more than $3 million to produce the machine. They had originally hoped to make $950,000 in 30 days through the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. But according to the Kickstarter blog, the Ouya project passed that mark and raised $1 million in pledges in its first eight hours -- making it the fastest Kickstarter project to reach the million dollar mark.
"We never anticipated that it would blow up like this.” Ouya founder Julie Uhrman told Venture Beat.
So what, exactly, is Ouya (pronounced like booyah without the b)? It's an Android-powered open gaming console designed by well-known industrial designer and philanthropist Yves Behar (he designed the One Laptop Per Child laptops). The "open" part of that sentence means that while game developers must get permission from the companies behind the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii and pay for expensive development kits to make games for those machines, that won't be the case with Ouya.
Ouya
Ouya controller
All developers will be welcome to make games for the Ouya without any licensing fees, retail fees or publishing fees say the gadget's creators. Instead, every Ouya will be its own development kit so developers won't need to purchase a license or an additional software development kit. And it will be open to developers, hackers and hobbyists of all stripes.
"The console market is pushing developers away," say Ouya's creators on their Kickstarter page. "We’ve seen a brain drain: some of the best, most creative gamemakers are focused on mobile and social games because those platforms are more developer-friendly."
The San-Francisco company behind Ouya hopes to harness the excitement found among independent developers working on mobile and social games and bring their games to the home television screen. And games from big publishers will find a welcome home on the machine as well, says Uhrman.
There is only one condition developers must meet: at least some of the gameplay they offer has to be free.
"We borrowed the free-to-play model from games like 'League of Legends,' 'Team Fortress 2,' 'Triple Town,' and many others," explains the Ouya Kickstarter page. "Developers can offer a free demo with a full-game upgrade, in-game items or powers, or ask you to subscribe."
Ouya is currently scheduled for a March 2013 launch and its creators promise a price under $100. Check out the full Ouya pitch here:
Meanwhile, several prominent independent developers are already throwing their weight -- or at least their positive quotes -- behind the project.
"I'm excited for Ouya! I am a firm believer that there is always room to challenge the status quo," says Jenova Chen, the developer behind innovative PlayStation Network favorites "flOw," "Flower" and "Journey."
"Our games will work so well on a TV, we just need an easy way to get them there. Ouya could be it," writes Marek Rabas of Madfinger Games.
Of course, Ouya -- with its Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal flash storage -- will be significantly less powerful than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (not to mention the next generation of mainstream game machines).
Meanwhile, not everyone is entirely bullish on the upstart game console. Over at PC World, writer Alex Rubens suspects that piracy could be a big problem with this inexpensive Android cube.
Reporter Ian Fisch of game industry blog Gamasutra also outlined a number of potential problems -- a lackluster Android game library, the fact that fewer and fewer gamers want to play games on their TVs, and obsolete Android specs, among them. He also points out something that I couldn't help but notice -- the Ouya interface (in the video above) looks a lot like the Xbox Live interface.
All in all, Fisch wonders if "these people are in over their heads."
And they may be. But one thing is for certain -- with more than 24,000 backers in only two days, the Ouya folks have tapped into something that resonates with many gamers. We'll see if it continues to resonate once it officially hits the market.
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Voted Timesplitters!
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CoD would be better to see than Timesplitters simply because of brand association, but I don't see any specific reason why they can't put them both on.
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I want timesplitters, but CoD would bring a lot of attention to the OUYA
voting Timesplitters though
Edited:
Also, Title is wrong, Timesplitters is beating CoD now
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And minecraft is winning, who let that become part of the poll..
Also it feels like "Tell us what games you want to replay all over again just on a different console!" with the only exception being Timesplitters possibly.
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So you are saying that a game we see every 8 months would be better than the originality of Timesplitters?
Get out.
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No I'm saying a game that regularly breaks sales records would be the perfect marketing tool whereas something with just a cult following isn't going to shift units, even if they got Timesplitters 4 it won't sell as much as if they got Black Ops 2 or a spin off and I'm pretty certain after they've got 3 million dollars people are going to want to see a decent return on their investment.
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True, but personally I wouldn't buy a brand new console just to get to play games that I somewhat already own and can easily play on different platforms
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Fair enough.
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A lot more people play CoD and would give the OUYA a second, or even first look, if there was buzz about such a hugely popular series coming to a new, out-of-left-field console.
Call of Duty sells and having it on the OUYA opens up a fairly huge demographic, as well as lending more legitimacy to the console as a huge AAA title as opposed to being ridiculed for being nothing but $1 mobile games
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And for $99 I wonder what it's capable of graphics wise, will it be on par with ps3 and 360 or the dreaded Wii
Saw the video for Tegra 3, definitely not Wii graphics
Edited:
Thank you!
Also "Exclusively on OUYA!" Let's hope not.
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It won't be on par with modern consoles that's for sure
Tegra 3 is a mobile chipset
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Putting Call of Duty on it for the sole purpose of letting it gain a massive boost in popularity is actually a pretty good idea.
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Well i'm sold if this thing takes off and has a decent game library
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You understand that voting for games will probably not help with bringing them to the console
I mean can you imagine activision support a non AAA indie console?
Me neither
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I think the most they're hoping for would be like CoD Online to be thrown at them, since they apparently want mainly free to play stuff which is probably going to put off a lot of developers.
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I voted for Timesplitters, but which one, every version?
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Why the hell is Fifa so high?
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Doesn't Minecraft have some sort of console exclusivity agreement with Microsoft?
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Catering to a small community is a terrible idea, they should cater to the largest community ever, and when they see success they can add more games that cater to smaller niches. Think.
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Except it's already on Android, so they would have already violated the agreement.
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of course Minecraft will be on there, it's Android
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Well, not really. Android is a mobile operating system for mobile devices. And the 360 Minecraft is a fork of the original maintained by someone else. Much like the Android release is a fork maintained by Mojang (I think anyway). The agreement only applies to the console fork I expect.
It using Android is the one reason I can't see this "console" having any real success outside of a small cult following (such as all the contributors). It won't have any of the AAA games people want, it is going to be behind in graphical and audio capabilities, and Android really isn't that optimal an OS. That 1GB of RAM it has might be more than any console today, but they use their RAM well, Android doesn't normally as it isn't built with one system in mind.
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actually i don't think it would be that surprising, it would probably help their PR quite a bit
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There's hardly a chance this is going to come out anyways. These self-proclaimed revolutionary consoles just fade into obscurity and die out over time.
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I hope this doesn't turn into another Gizmondo.
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I think you mean Pandora.
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I really like the battletoads in there. I wonder why that ended up on the list.
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I'm sorry but what, how is a Tegra 3 supposed to be running Skyrim, Mass Effect, BattleField even Call of Duty without it being some shitty version. Are the developers living in some dream world or something.
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I was thinking the same thing, I mean, if can run a rather poor looking version of Dungeon Defenders
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I wouldn't mind seeing quake 3 on it.
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Everything can run Quake 3. seriously.
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I know, it's still a nice game.
Even my Raspberry Pi plays it quite well.
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There are people voting for minecraft? Are there people out there who still want it but couldn't have bought it yet?
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I love the idea, but without hardware muscle it's not really worth anything. Playing Angry Birds on a TV loses it's novelty pretty fast.
Besides, I don't want the mobile freemium scheme coming to mainstream gaming. I don't want to buy a game for $60 only to find out that 90% of the content requires me to keep spending money and it's all saturated in ads anyway.
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I thought they said Minecraft would be included anyway, so why include it in the poll?
I'd like something like timesplitters, used to always play that game.
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Maybe, with the money they earned outside of their (ridiculously low) requirement, they could look at changing out the Tegra3 for something a bit more, well, useful. If you want to be a console, you have to be able to rival at least the Wii, people want to see their AAA games, not the Android versions or knockoffs. If it was a PC (as in, x86/64) compatible platform it would open up a lot more.
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Well for all the money they made, they need to make a console for every person that pledged $100
If they want to use beefier specs they'll need to charge every person that much more.
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True, which is why I thought their requested amount was really low. With the money required to both pitch the idea to a manufacturer, the actual costs of manufacturing and advertising it, I don't know if they would have managed that in the original $950,000. But the extra money does give them some freedom to change things up a bit now.
Dumb x 45
Winner x 4
Funny x 2
Agree x 23
Friendly x 1
Disagree x 1
Informative x 1
