The Flopped Ouya Console Gets Acquired By Razer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Flopped Ouya Console Gets Acquired By Razer

To very little surprise, Ouya -- the company that started out on Kickstarter as an Android game console -- has been acquired. The reported suitor for the company is high-end gaming company Razer...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ouya-Bought-By-Razer

[migizi]

There was lots of promise and potential. It was just the worst executed plan I've seen. The controller, one of the most important aspects, was complete shit. Input delays, crappy feeling, crappy design, poorly constructed, lost connectivity all the time, and the list goes on. The Android version was horribly done. Everything was sluggish and felt like you were running your stuff on a i386. I backed that Kickstarter with high hopes. Only used for a total 4 hours. Then boxed it up and forgot about it.

Unless Razer has drastic plans, the purchase of the company is a waste of money. I don't think any micro-console is selling/doing well.

[Passso]

Another Kickstarter that gets kicked out of business to be acquired for a few dollars

The idea was good enough but in the end it was just mobile games ported to tv...

I just hope they did not spent all the money on their ugly website : https://www.ouya.tv/
Double record of ugliness with their infamous controller!

[schmidtbag]

There was lots of promise and potential. It was just the worst executed plan I've seen. The controller, one of the most important aspects, was complete shit. Input delays, crappy feeling, crappy design, poorly constructed, lost connectivity all the time, and the list goes on. The Android version was horribly done. Everything was sluggish and felt like you were running your stuff on a i386. I backed that Kickstarter with high hopes. Only used for a total 4 hours. Then boxed it up and forgot about it.

Unless Razer has drastic plans, the purchase of the company is a waste of money. I don't think any micro-console is selling/doing well.

Not to mention, the console itself was already obsoleted old tech by the time it was released. They really should have just jumped to Tegra 4. They had enough money to look into it. I might've considered supporting it if they didn't do Tegra 3.

[torsionbar28]

There was lots of promise and potential. It was just the worst executed plan I've seen. The controller, one of the most important aspects, was complete shit. Input delays, crappy feeling, crappy design, poorly constructed, lost connectivity all the time, and the list goes on. The Android version was horribly done. Everything was sluggish and felt like you were running your stuff on a i386. I backed that Kickstarter with high hopes. Only used for a total 4 hours. Then boxed it up and forgot about it.

Unless Razer has drastic plans, the purchase of the company is a waste of money. I don't think any micro-console is selling/doing well.

This is the polar opposite from my own experience with Ouya. I missed the original Kickstarter launch, but I bought one at retail, after it went on general sale to the public.

I think the first run of controllers was known for having issues, but I've had zero problems with mine. In fact, I was surprised by the high quality and nice feel of the controller - it was much better than I was expecting for being bundled with a $99 console. The fact that the controller takes standard AA batteries means I can use my rechargeable AA's in it, so I don't have to deal with a sealed non-replaceable or proprietary battery like most other consoles/devices.

I was also surprised at how capable the Ouya was, from a graphics perspective. I've played PS2 games that look worse. Sure it doesn't have the same blockbuster titles as PS4 or Xbox One, but that's not the point, this is isn't intended to compete with those. One area of gaming where the Ouya is particular excellent, is retro gaming. It has emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. so if you have some ROM files, you can play all your favorite classic video games on the living room TV, with a real controller - it's just like being back in 1992! That beats sitting in front of the computer and playing games with the keyboard any day, or dorking around with a ugly Raspberry Pi and the rat nest of wiring needed to make it work.

The other thing Ouya shines at, is as a media center. It has XBMC as an official app, so it makes a cheap unobtrusive media center machine. No need to buy an ugly, bulky, noisy PC for your living room.

Now that I think about it, that's mainly what I use my Ouya for - retro gaming, and XBMC media center. I can't think of any other device that for $99, is a robust and complete answer to both of these use cases. I can understand that this might be a niche market with limited mass-market appeal, but it certainly doesn't make Ouya a bad product. I think those who badmouth it, didn't understand what it was they were buying.

[Ardje]

The biggest problem with the ouya I have is that there is no CEC support, which only had to be compiled in the kernel, and using devices without CEC is a big hassle, as I have to open the closet with the receiver and get the remote for that receiver.
But besides that, the ouya is fun. The controllers are bad. But a PS3 controller works fine.
At the time the ouya came out, a tegra 4 did not exist so it could not be designed around it.
The tegra 3 is indeed slow, slower than an exynos 5250, and graphics performance was also bad at 1080@30hz resolutions (compared to a nexus 10 @ 2560x1440)

[kaprikawn]

They were talking about annual iterations, with the first being the Tegra 4 version, but that never materialised. I can understand them wanting to stick with the Tegra 3 for the first version to get it out the door, but I would only have gotten one had they released a version with a better SoC.

[madjr]

This is the polar opposite from my own experience with Ouya. I missed the original Kickstarter launch, but I bought one at retail, after it went on general sale to the public.

I was also surprised at how capable the Ouya was, from a graphics perspective. I've played PS2 games that look worse. Sure it doesn't have the same blockbuster titles as PS4 or Xbox One, but that's not the point, this is isn't intended to compete with those. One area of gaming where the Ouya is particular excellent, is retro gaming. It has emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. so if you have some ROM files, you can play all your favorite classic video games on the living room TV, with a real controller - it's just like being back in 1992! That beats sitting in front of the computer and playing games with the keyboard any day, or dorking around with a ugly Raspberry Pi and the rat nest of wiring needed to make it work.

The other thing Ouya shines at, is as a media center. It has XBMC as an official app, so it makes a cheap unobtrusive media center machine. No need to buy an ugly, bulky, noisy PC for your living room.

Now that I think about it, that's mainly what I use my Ouya for - retro gaming, and XBMC media center. I can't think of any other device that for $99, is a robust and complete answer to both of these use cases. I can understand that this might be a niche market with limited mass-market appeal, but it certainly doesn't make Ouya a bad product. I think those who badmouth it, didn't understand what it was they were buying.

Would be interesting if the Steam link and/or SteamOS gets support for XBMC / KODI and emulators.

So for $100 you could get a Steampad + a Link that could stream, but also potentially be used to play roms and media center stuff...

Anyway another failing Console is the Wii U. So nintendo is planning the NX, which from rumors would use android as a common base for their future portables/consoles. Maybe Razer is interested in helping Nintendo out with that....

OUYA was bound to fail anyway in attracting developers and didn't have solid long term plans / budget.

Valve on the other hand is looking at long term supporting and improving all the stuff they're working on.

They literally let things incrementally "pick up steam"

Thanks to the big engines supporting Linux, we will get lots of titles almost by Osmosis till we get over the chicken / egg situation that plagues newer competing platforms.

Valve is also not betting everything on the first gen of steam machines nor have they spent too much $ on the hardware directly, they're letting third parties take some risks too, since in the long run they could become a more serious threat to traditional consoles.

[droidhacker]

Well... duh. Thing about games is that your money comes from all the kiddies begging mommy and daddy for the newest douchebox or fartstation. Without marketing on THAT SCALE, it isn't going to go anywhere, and marketing on that scale doesn't sell for $100 per unit.


.. and then mommy/daddy buys a Nintendo, 'cause non-violent.

[GreatEmerald]

Hah, that's pretty funny, in the article page the advert being displayed was for the NVIDIA SHIELD.

Sure it doesn't have the same blockbuster titles as PS4 or Xbox One, but that's not the point, this is isn't intended to compete with those. One area of gaming where the Ouya is particular excellent, is retro gaming. It has emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. so if you have some ROM files, you can play all your favorite classic video games on the living room TV, with a real controller - it's just like being back in 1992! That beats sitting in front of the computer and playing games with the keyboard any day, or dorking around with a ugly Raspberry Pi and the rat nest of wiring needed to make it work.

For someone who wasn't in 1992, nothing beats playing games with the keyboard.