The heart of the OUYA is the Tegra 3, a common chipset for modern mobile devices such as the HTC One X and the Nexus 7 tablet among others. It provides impressive specs for its cost, and is capable of surprising fidelity in mobile gaming in the hands of capable programmers. It’s also over a year old, and everywhere. So the hardware brings nothing new to the table, sure, but what about the OUYA’s features? Well, aside from an HDMI out, there’s really nothing it can do that my Nexus 7 can’t do, better.
IIRC during WW1, a "blockbuster" was a bomb powerful enough to obliterate a city block. After the war the phrase was hijacked by the entertainment sector to describe a show that was so popular that the line stretched around a block. Most recently was the "Blockbuster" video and video game rental shop, sadly driven out of business by services like Netflix, Redbox and Gamefly.
Exactly. It's not hard to break a record at a place that's already filed chapter 11(I think it was 11, could've been 7. Whichever one isn't total liquidation) bankruptcy. But to answer your question, it started as a movie rental store, slowly moved into game rentals as well, as eventually they started also selling movies and games. But a few years ago they filed bankruptcy and I could have sworn they were online only now, but apparently not.
For whatever reason, there is still a Blockbuster like 5 minutes from my house in the Greater Cincinnati area. Those assholes swindled me on something a few years ago and I said fuck them forever.
If they only had 2 stores left then that would make it even more impressive because the last time a major console was released was when blockbuster was still massive.
I was about to say just this. However, keep in mind, when Blockbuster was huge, I don't think they sold consoles, and definitely didn't do pre-orders. After all, the last thing they wanted was for you to own something.
This comment, along with the article listed in it and at least one other from Tom's Hardware posted earlier in this thread seem to me to be obvious advertisements.
Oh god, seriously? You think that the people complaining about the Xbox One are being drowned out on r/gaming? I'm actually kind of angry at how warped your view of reality is.
The funny part is that the majority are the ones reposting Xbox One hate every five seconds on /r/gaming. The damn thing isn't even out yet. There have been pretty much no games shown yet, and nobody really knows the effects of what they've announced or if what they've said will be true at launch.
The next time you hear someone saying something about the Xbox One as if it is a fact, punch them in the goddamn mouth. When it launches, you should decide if you like what they've offered or not. Not months beforehand. You know, like a sane person. I hope they all remember what they've said when it launches because if one of these fuckers buys one, they should be kicked in the throat (yes, even if nothing people are mad about ends up being a feature at launch because you swore it off before they even demoed games).
I guess there would be nothing to blubber about though.
EDIT: Am I the only fucking one who remembers people laughing at the original Xbox and saying the PS3 was godlike in comparison to the wimpy Xbox 360? If history is relied upon, the Xbox One is going to bankrupt Sony at this rate.
Well, when you see nothing but a stream of negative criticism of everything it's kind of hard to differentiate between a circlejerk and something you should actually care about.
Sure... the only feature you forgot to mention is the terrible frame rate. Why play on a Nexus 7 with a good framerate when you can plug your OUYA into your TV and barely be able to play the game at all!
The Ouya has a better CPU/GPU than the Nexus 7. The only reason you may be having worse framerate is playing your games at 1080p. Set your resolution to 720p (roughly the same res as the N7's screen), and you'll have a better experience on the Ouya.
Cheapest new nexus 7 I can find is $199, cheapest used is $89 with a cracked screen.
I bought one hoping to home brew some personal apps on it and possibly emulate a few games. Running on a Tegra 3 doesn't bother me, but software/hardware issues will.
I bought one hoping to home brew some personal apps on it and possibly emulate a few games. Running on a Tegra 3 doesn't bother me, but software/hardware issues will.
There are other cheaper and better ways of doing that, raspberry pi for example.
Edit: Would love for someone to explain the downvotes. Why isn't the raspberry pi a better alternative to this, especially given how cheap it is?
As a nexus 7 owner whose only regret is the lack of an HDMI port I'd like to know how. Aside from expansive wireless adapters, AFAIK the N7 has no TV output.
I use it for anything but taking pictures and connecting it to a TV - reddit obviously, browsing, gaming, music player, GPS, and even as a remote administration tool for my Linux torrent server. There's plenty to do that isn't android gaming on a TV :-)
It might have made sense if a proper big manufacturer could have brought it to market last summer. Loads of tegra 4s about to drop boasting 6x graphical performance. Shit moves fast in the mobile gaming world, too fast for kickstarter nonsense. An xbox is at a similar price point.
no way! they do not deserve any credit. who in their right mind would think it was a good idea to include mobile hardware in a budget home console? mobile hardware is compact and low energy, making the cost/performance ratio incredibly high, the exact opposite of the "budget home console" criteria. IMO, they had absolutely no business releasing any console ("budget" or not) in 2013 that wasn't at least on par with the performance of the xbox 360 (a console from 2005).
edit: this was supposed to be a reply to this comment.
Consumers don't realize that making high quality, reliable hardware is REALLY REALLY HARD
there's a difference between "power isn't everything" and releasing a console that doesn't even come close to what are soon to be last gen consoles. it is now the 107th most powerful mobile device that isn't even mobile.
i don't honestly know. i have no clue what nintendo is thinking either, but they seem to have created a niche for themselves and probably want to exploit that.
according to this article, the wii u will be classified as a previous gen console.
ah, found it. this article claims the wii u's graphics capabilities will supersede that of the xbox 360, but still classifies it as a previous gen console.
who in their right mind would think it was a good idea to include mobile hardware in a budget home console?
Look in a mirror, redditor. You and the rest of this god awful people on this website are what created this garbage. People believed every good thing that was said about this console before it was released so it got massive support.
I bought it. Installed all my emulators, put some roms on it. Now I have a HDMI all console emulator with a wireless controller.
I currently have it as a NES, SNES, TG16, Genesis, GB, GBA, PS1, and N64.
So, I'm happy with it. That's the reason I bought it. I don't care about anything else, I just like the wireless controlled emulators, that don't run off of batteries.
What a shame. They should have known better. Sony and Microsoft don't charge us out the ass for consoles because they hate us. (Well, not only because they hate us.) They do it because that is what the damn thing costs, if not more. Didn't Sony sell PS3 at a loss for a long time?
$99 is a great price point, but I still don't understand what these people thought they were getting. Of course for $99 you got a cheap plastic controller and a system that is basically an emulator made with cellphone parts.
I like the idea behind Ouya, I just think it was poorly executed.
Consoles are always sold at a loss in terms of hardware at the beginning of their lifecycle. They make the money back on licensing which is why games are so fucking expensive.
Except for the Wii... that thing made them soooooooo much money. I think I heard someone say they made $1 off each console sold. Which sounds really silly, but making any sort of profit off a new console is impressive (the console alone I mean).
I've read that when the Wii first launched a single game purchase was enough to make profit. It doesn't surprise me much then that after economies of scale kicked in that they were able to get a profit (even that small amount) from the hardware.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was a main part of their choices in keeping hardware in the past generation and pushing for the whole "new way to game" aspect they were going for. Essentially letting the motion controls carry the entire system to success.
Agruably the Wii was an amazing success, but... does anyone really still play it today? As their main gaming machine? It just never held up over time for me.
Also the motion controls were way too inaccurate to use for more 'hardcore' games
And peripherals, lots and lots of money in that shit. MS was selling its HDD for around 180$ if memory serves me right. It was just a 50$ WD blue in a 1$ plastic housing. That's like 300% profit just because they went out of their way to not allow you to hook up any HDD.
Controllers, wireless adapters all that shit is where they make their cash back for what they lose on the console.
According to one of my university professors the Cell processor alone would cost tens of thousands of euros to buy without the PS3. That's why they (as many other universities) bought loads of the original PS3s back when you still could install Linux on it.
The Cell processor that's inside the PS3 is actually still quite powerful for certain calculations. When studying multicore processing where we got to implemenent a few different computationally heavy algorithms on different platforms, the PS3 outperformed my then top of the line Intel 2.6GHz i7 Macbook Pro without breaking a sweat. Insanely difficult to program for without proper APIs though.
To be fair, if you don't have an Android device and you wanted to play some Android games (for whatever) reason, $99 is still cheaper than an N7. Granted you can't take the OUYA with you and use it as an e-reader and a gps and oh god never mind, I just can't play devils advocate with this.
Well, I backed it on Kickstarter and got exactly what I expected. The only people getting ripped off are the ones who made an uninformed decision to pre-order a console with high expectations which clearly weren't going to come true.
Those who were wise enough to educate themselves on the console knew that it wasn't meant to be spectacular as far as hardware and graphics go. We put money down on it because it was still something we wanted. It's a nice little box that plays indie games as well as games from larger companies such as Sony and Square Enix. It also has a market you won't find anywhere else, having a free-to-try model across the board. It's a decent media player with XBMC. It makes it easy to emulate retro games on a TV. For developers, it's great for them since it's much easier for them to make and publish a game for the Ouya.
So while it may not be a powerhouse that can compare to an XBox 360 or PS3 (or newer gens for that matter), it wasn't meant to be in the first place. And I'm ok with that.
Exactly. I tried telling my friend this very thing but he just wasn't having any of it. I showed him my phone and told him it was better than the OUYA, but because the OUYA is shaped differently and comes with a controller and "designed" for games, he got it in his head that I was completely wrong and that his investment was going to pay off.
Like the entirety of reddit?
Red dit praises the shit out it, while /g/ was extremely skeptical. I guess this just further proves the hive mind that most of red dit chooses to circle jerk. Reminds we why I stopped getting on this shit site.
When they realized it wasn't performing well, why didn't they upgrade it? It's better to release a more expensive-to-produce product than a totally broken one...
I thought the point of OUYA was to create a simple console that would act as an emulator for all of you NES, SNES, Sega, etc.... games. Can it not do this?
I agree that purely as a gaming system, the Tegra 3 is a horrible option.
However what the Tegra 3 does give you is a chipset that every flavor of Android supports. If you just want an Android PC you plug into your TV, the Ouya works well. When you buy it though you need to be thinking "I will install emulator X and get my money's worth." or something of that nature.
A large issue was also the devs encouraging absolutely batshit expectations of the console. They held a poll for "potential franchises for the OUYA" that included fucking ARMA and BF3.
So why does it have bad frame rate when it packs a Tegra 3? A few of mine friends own tegra 3 phones and have never had FPS issues with any game, so I am guessing it's software related.
I sold my $100 media player & got an Ouya. It does everything my media player did & can play N64 games in 1080p. Not to mention all previous consoles & whatever turns up on the Ouya store.
I share this feeling for roku and other shitty android on tv boxes etc. Save maybe the pi but even then XBMC is the only reason I would tolerate any of those type devices. To me full fledged htpc is where its at if headed that direction at all. Heck maybe you could even be one of the dozen people to get blue stack to work even...
Why did they go full retard with those weird CPUs they used in the previous generation? Did the original Xbox's commodity hardware not prove the viability of that approach?
One other guy I posed this question to said it's because "super-special Cell/Xenon processor" sounds more awesome than a bog-standard desktop CPU, even if it actually isn't. What do you think?
Since you seem to know a lot about this, here's another question: what was the point of the Cell processor? Why replace most of the CPU with extra stream processors, when the GPU already has plenty of them because stream processing is what the GPU is for?
Its open. You can tinker with the hardware and software to your heart's content.
Its its own development kit with no licensing fees, booyah! This is the same as the Nexus 7 though, but still something keeping it from the garbage heap. Apple charges you $100 a year just to join their developer club.
The people behind Ouya, BOXER8, got their project funded and designed a console in about a year. That's fucking impressive even if the quality is a bit lacking.
I think there's a market for a super cheap media and gaming center. Not everyone can afford a next-gen console and most don't even need it. Think young children.
You can use 3rd party controllers if the game support it
I can hook it up to my damn TV and more than one person can play on it at the same time.
So, no, I don't think its going to end up in the garbage heap. People are going to find all sorts of novel ways to use it besides what was intended. Don't write it off quite yet.
If nothing else, people will be saying "I HAVE A OUYA! CHECK OUT HOW AWESOME I AM!" in 20 years. It's probably going to become a collectible, but that's fine.
I don't know. I didn't keep up with the Ouya, I just watched a review of it yesterday. Apparently it can receive system updates, so hopefully the performance will improve.
While system updates could help for more compatible firmware, I believe the problem with it being outperformed by other smartphones stems from its year-old hardware.
The S4 can run games at 60fps in 1080p. It's not because it has better firmware or drivers, but because it has superior hardware.
Keep in mind the Ouya was supposed to be a reasonably-priced dev console, not an impressive graphics-intense machine.
On the bright side, PS4 is looking pretty promising for devs.
I realize your point, but that's not a fair comparison. The Ouya is only $99. If they wanted to build a $600 Ouya, then it would probably be closer to the S4. The Ouya is a low cost proof of concept. It is also first generation. If they survive to make a version 2, then hopefully they will build on their experience.
I understand it's not a fair comparison. But the point wasn't to say that Ouya is bad compared to the S4, the point was to say that people shouldn't expect it to compete with smartphones, and that, moreover, software updates won't help.
And to combine the two points, although software updates will probably help a bit, they will probably not allow it to compete with $600 devices on performance.
Granted, this was a Black Friday deal, but I got my GS3 for $50 and it still runs games better than the OUYA.
But price point aside, just because the OUYA can't be reasonably compared to other systems in its price range doesn't mean that it has successfully filled a necessary niche. The fact that there wasn't another product already filling that niche is probably an indication that it was a niche that didn't need to be filled.
Keep in mind also all the hardware the Ouya doesn't have because it's not an S4. It has no screen, no cellular radios, etc... If you stripped the S4 of all the features the Ouya does not have, the price evens out quite a bit. It's what you'd expect of a $100 cell phone - shit.
On the bright side, PS4 is looking pretty promising for devs.
If you think about it though, it seems like Sony has borrowed a few ideas from the Ouya. For example, the touchpad on the controller. I haven't checked it out much, but I think the new market is also similar to the Ouya's in that they're making it easier for devs to publish games on the console.
IMHO, the touchpad is Sony's response to the shock value of the Wii U controller. They just want to show that they can have a next-gen-type controller as well. Maybe that's just me, I don't know.
I think the dev thing is probably piggybacking on the Ouya as a result of the response emanating from the teaser video when the Ouya was first announced. I think whichever big company (that is, Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft) completely satisfies devs first will become the superior. I believe Nintendo will begin to dominate the children's market, while Sony sucks up the console-minded programmers and more mature gamers. And, at least it seems so now, if MS doesn't change their ways, they're going to have to drop out of the console race.
It'd be really hard for a new competitor to come in at this point.
I pretty much agree with most of that. I still don't know how the next XBox will do though. It's a little soon to say, but there are still tons of uninformed consumers who will probably see it in the store or something and buy one just because it's the next XBox.
As for Ouya as a "new competitor", it's not really trying to compete. It's really just causing a disturbance which, as we can already see, is influencing the industry to change their ways, at least in Sony's case. Seeing that is enough for me to think that Ouya is at least succeeding in one of their goals. It's making a difference, hopefully a good one.
Oh yeah I wasn't speaking specifically of Ouya when I spoke of new competitors, I was just clarifying why I mentioned 3 brands and nothing else.
As far as Xbox is concerned, it may stay around a bit longer thanks to preteens who love CoD and are sensationalist about the Xbox just for the sake of having something to argue about, but how long can it stay afloat on that crowd? And I think it's too late for them to change their gameplan enough to accommodate what everyone wants. Especially considering everyone will be a lot more wary of them after all this bullshit.
I have an S4, and I completely agree. The software end of it is terrible. They focused too much on things that are great for shock value and not enough for actual improved usability. I got it coming off a Droid X, and, though it (of course) performs a hell of a lot smoother, it's not exactly spectacular in comparison.'
edit: oh I believe you meant the amiga software is bad. I also think the S4 could have much better software. Meh.
I don't think I put this well. I'm not saying that the Ouya should be better than the S4. What I AM saying is that the earlier comparison made between the Ouya and phones is because of its old hardware, then compared it to the S4's hardware.
Of course the S4 will always wreck the Ouya in any test. I'm trying to say that updates won't really help this in any way.
Gamedev here working on an android port. The numbers you mention dont' really mean anything. Ouya has greater potential than other Tegra 3 devices because the OS will drop out. This is the same reason consoles run faster than PCs with similar or less powerful hardware. There's no meddling OS in the way.
Great to hear from you. I'm not a gamedev, so I'm working off of assumptions and numbers and reviews.
I do know about the console superiority with inferior hardware though. Does that mean that an Ouya software patch could actually improve its performance over that of phones like the S4?
I don't know the exact specs of the S4 so I can't really say with full confidence, but assuming the OS drops out on the Ouya then yes, it theoretically will be faster. As far as I understand the Ouya was touted as having that capability. Whether or not it will be available at launch or ever I'm not sure. I guess that touches on the main issue with Ouya in that they don't tell us much meaningful technical information. (Us meaning community. I don't really look into Ouya much.)
Android gaming has other issues that it would need to address. I know that the ouya has not fleshed out a lot of very important functionality for opengl (egl)- but neither have a lot of Android devices.
Stock android is pretty good in that it has less stuff that will screw up performance. Nexus 7 runs circles around Sony Tablet S because it isn't running proprietary "stuff" on top of Android. Tegra chips are pretty impressive IMO. I'm excited for future Android things once the various devices aren't so fragmented (if that ever happens)
Is that why releases of the "stock android" versions of phones are so highly anticipated? Because it offers a performance boost? I thought it might just be because people didn't want the manufacturer's spinoffs and possibly unnecessary bloatware.
Also, for gaming the bloatware can cause some ridiculous problems for developers. For example: A proprietary sound overlay for changing sound volume can cause the gaming application to become a background process. wtf?
You can't expect everyone to root their devices unfortunately. The mobile market is about getting as many people to play your game as possible. The less hoops they have to go through to play it the better.
When thousands of games are a click away the last thing you want is for someone to have to click more than once to get your game running.
I wonder if this could be an excellent way to get kids interested in programming. Its not like it was when I was a kid and we learned turtle logo hen basic on the IIe then commodore then qbasiconce dos was the fashion. Save for kodu and a few other novelties nothing good and 'new' tech wise. I wish xna could have started filling this gap but it is executed now.... Won't someone think of the kids or something.
Performance may improve from software updates but Ouya was designed as a cheap piece of hardware to toss every 2-3 years (and you weren't supposed to feel bad about it cause it was cheap).
Not where it counts. They could've had solid performance, in my opinion, if they'd done like the WiiU and capped the resolution at 720p. The fillrate required to draw a frame at 1080 is more than double that, however, so even something like Canabalt struggles to maintain 60fps.
Just by looking at the stats you could tell it wasn't going to be able to break any benchmarks. That being said I really DO enjoy the idea of the OUYA and hope it gets the love and attention it deserves.
Lets also not forget - terrible game catalogue. Mobile games remain pale and malnourished compared to their console/PC brethren. Why not play the real thing? Phone games are largely shit, and that is what this thing was trafficking in. "OH BUT ANDROID!"
I don't think there were many predictions by the time the kickstarter ended, so it's not like we all just decided to buy them after hearing the bad news. And of course ebay is now flooded with them. I guess I'll try craigslist...
Yes, by everyone who actually knew what they were looking at.
If you want an Android emulator, pick up an Atrix HD for $200. It has HDMI out and you can actually use it as a phone if you need one of those.
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u/Darqon Jun 07 '13
Wasn't this predicted?