The problem with calling it the perfect "party gaming" console is that it completely doesn't work for that when "it took me almost an hour to update the firmware and configure the 4 controllers."
I'm not saying that to hurt OUYA, I'm just saying that if they want to find this niche they should focus some effort on fixing that.
Edit: I'm not implying that other consoles are better fitted to this. I'm implying that engineering a console so that setup time is always fast even when you've not touched it for weeks could be a valuable feature in the "party gaming" market.
This is a huge problem with new consoles I find. I don't remember having to update my N64 every time I wanted to play it. But my PS3? Every time I want to play I have to spend like 30 minutes in downloading and installing an update. Every single time. I don't play that often but still do play from times to times and I haven't had a clean launch for years.
Well, if I let my PS3 in the box for about a year and then try to play a quick round of some casual game downloaded from the store, I'll have to go through the same ordeal. If it's used daily, then not. It's a function of how often you use your console.
He compares it only to the PlayStations but in my experience the Kinect with an Xbox makes it a pretty good party console. One day at work, we had everyone including 60+ year old women who never played a video game have fun with some of the Kinect motion games. I can't imagine the learning curve for them to even press a couple of buttons on a controller.
The updates take long on any console though, so I wouldn't blame the Ouya, especially with its weak controller. The biggest problem Ouya has now is that it's competing with Xbox360 and the PS3 on price. You can used ones for around $100 to $150 and they have vast libraries of games.
My PS3 is kept up-to-date and despite this my typical experience launching a game I haven't played in a while or installing a new game is 30m-2h of patching with comically uninformative progress bars.
I don't know if the XBox 360 would have the same problem if I bothered to hook it up to the internet. Frequently installing a new game requires a lengthy patch to the OS, but I don't get over-the-air updates so overall my XBox 360 experience is better.
It's not like you have to update it/configure controllers every time you turn it on. My Xbox often has to update prior to me being able to use it if I haven't played it for awhile too.
To be honest the Wii U launch day update was pretty bad. It took much more than one hour, and you'd brick your console if you powered it off thinking it was "stuck" during the update.
It's worth noting that the most recent update includes the ability to skip a firmware update if you only want to play the games already on your system.
While this might not have helped him here (his firmware sounded really old), they've already taken this sort of annoyance into account, and so at future get-togethers, even if there's an update, you'll just be able to go and play.
It probably only took 1 hour to do it because he hadn't been doing updates in months and months .. I'm sure if the system was in solid, regulary (say: weekly) use then it wouldn't have been such an issue ..
My take-away from this article was that if every OUYA shipped with a $10-$25 gift card or starting account balance, people would get into it a lot easier, and not box it up after a week.
Most consoles ship with full games. If the OUYA is only shipping with free trials, they aren't really competing.
Side-note, the home page of their website, what are they thinking? It looks like a stop sign. Or a "come back later". I literally went to their site earlier this year and thought it wasn't live yet, didn't bother going any further - until today. Shoot, it might as be one of those giant red circles with a line through it saying "go away!"
"the home page of their website, what are they thinking?"
You're right... this should be put in the 'bad ideas' portfolio for web design instructors to use in future lessons.
Even after you know that it is not a "come back later", it still feels wrong and awkward having to ignore your natural instincts to leave, as you look past the big red circles and explore the site!
Just a note, every game in the Ouya store has a free trial or some kind of free mode. You can download every game & start playing it right away, then choose to pay to unlock the rest of it later. Of course some games are completely free, but they're generally not very polished.
This is exactly how I feel about my Ouya. It sits on the side of my TV stand completely unobtrusively, and if friends come over within 30 seconds we can be playing frantic, immersive games. Not desperately struggling to figure out how we get a second player online without a second xbox live account.
It's a shame enough people didn't realise this from the start, but $150 is not a lot of outlay for what I got in return and when the games eventually move on to Ouya 2, I will just put XBMC on it and it's still a great device.
While modern $99 "video pucks" like AppleTV, Roku, or Amazon are good streaming clients for NetFlix, etc, they utterly suck at playing files from a local network. Ouya + XMBC is an incredibly option for this use case, now that Boxee is gone.
> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone.
This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead.
Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the novice's favor, to the point where if they land a few lucky hits they win.
I've never played FIFA, but I'd be surprised if it didn't have some way to skew the balance of the game in favor of the novice.
The FIFA equivalent (which was how I learned the game with my roommate who was very good at it) is that the more skilled person picks a lower-ranked team and the new player gets their pick of any team. The difference in maneuverability between teams is enough to even most odds, at least after one or two games of getting used to the controls.
I find games with friends to be substantially less fun when people have to be handicapped. When I win, it feels like it's because of the handicap, not because I did anything right.
Disagree. There are certain games that you have to be 'good' at for it to be fun. My friends can't play Fifa. No matter how easy I am on them, or what team I pick, they just run around and shoot the ball every time. But they LOVE Hidden In Plain Sight. We have played it for hours.
Then they mash the buttons away and win almost half of the time.
He's right, these games are meant to be played by people with about the same experience, or at least a decent amount of experience and then a bit of handicap.
Wired Xbox 360 controllers work out of the box, as well. I feel like they missed an opportunity in promoting the compatibility more, especially as they got so much negative press about their controllers.
That's mostly the fault of the author and our marketing budget. We've been getting a steady stream of awesome new games including Duck Game, which I'm sure would have been a hit at this guy's party: https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/
The trend the author is seeing is not just on Ouya. 'Sportsfriends' on PS4 (and PC soon) has four unique games as good as any he played for local multiplayer. Towerfall is better on PS4. And many more like these the pipe! I heartily recommend Nidhogg when it comes out for PS4 later.
If you have a PS4 and more than one other local person to play with occasionally you must be Sportsfriends right away!
But the PS4 is $400, and makes a lot of heat. The Ouya is $100 + money for other controllers (which could be Ouya, PS3 or Xbox controllers). If you just want Towerfall and Nidhogg, the Ouya is a much better deal!
Very interesting, I'm surprised to see that Ouya is still alive. This is sort of what I want in a console today. I don't have time to play lengthy AAA games and prefer social games, but there are few alternatives for that type of gaming.
A lot of his arguments (good party console, hardware doesnt always matter, etc) also apply to Nintendo consoles. Ive always loved the Wii for similar reasons (the fact that it is easy to softmod doesnt hurt either :P )
The Ouya has some fun games and it's a cool little console. It's not even remotely perfect, but I'm glad it exists. Between Ouya, Kindle TV, and maybe someday Apple TV or other smart TV's, there's going to be a nice place to put fun little indie games in more places, which is good for developers.
I guess this is self promotion but it seems relevant.
I probably should have posted this early but I've been working on a library/framework for making party games with lots more than 4 players.
Players use their smartphone as the controller but all look at the same TV to play the games.
I've only had a couple of "larger" sessions so far but have had 17 player space wars and 14 player bomberman like. Going to try for 30 to 40 players in a few days.
I probably would have actually enjoyed the Ouya, but it had such terrible input lag that it was effectively unplayable. Couldn't find any way to fix it, so it just sits on a shelf in my apartment now.
1) Flipping the unit on its side so that the power button is facing me and the wires stick up in the air. Apparently the original run units had a metal base which affected signal from the antenna.
2) Switching the Bluetooth controllers to get the priority no matter if there's a game downloading or not. This feature/option was included in a recent update and you can find it in the Controllers->Settings menu.
I have a chocolate brown Kickstarter-backer model and I no longer get controller lag.
You may have some luck opening a support ticket[1]. I had the same issue and they sent me a shipping label to send the controllers in for a firmware update. I haven't turned the console on since I've gotten the controllers back, so I don't know if it fixed the issue but they claimed it would.
Do not own an ouya, but I have been very pleasantly surprised by both performance of the device and quality of the games on my FireTV. Expect great things going forward.
I know this is exactly the opposite point the article is trying to make, but I'll wait until they're selling a version with a Denver CPU and a Maxwell GPU, before I even consider buying one. However, I'm not sure they'll survive that long. Maybe releasing one with Tegra K1 this year would sustain them a bit longer. I don't think you can even do 1080p games on OUYA, unless they are 2D. Maybe that's fine for kids or something, but not for me.
I wish people would stop using the term 'AAA' . Its meaningless imo as any other members from the implied scale (AAA, AAB, AAC, whatever) are never referred to.
I find it one of the more annoying americanisms.
edit: What people actually mean when they say " an AAA game" is "a game with a very large development budget"
"AAA" is a marketroid term which means at least three things: a good game, a popular game, or a game with a large development and especially marketing budget. To the marketroid, each is coterminous with the other two.
Similar ambiguity exists around "hardcore" which means roughly the intersection of gamers who seek out challenging games, gamers who play competitively online, and gamers who enjoy adult content like sex and violence.
Fair enough, how would you like us to identify the tentpole games like Madden or Call of Duty, vs the smaller games that have less artwork, fewer levels, and limited professional voicing/bodywork?
lhnz|11 years ago
I'm not saying that to hurt OUYA, I'm just saying that if they want to find this niche they should focus some effort on fixing that.
Edit: I'm not implying that other consoles are better fitted to this. I'm implying that engineering a console so that setup time is always fast even when you've not touched it for weeks could be a valuable feature in the "party gaming" market.
baby|11 years ago
Xylakant|11 years ago
wfjackson|11 years ago
The updates take long on any console though, so I wouldn't blame the Ouya, especially with its weak controller. The biggest problem Ouya has now is that it's competing with Xbox360 and the PS3 on price. You can used ones for around $100 to $150 and they have vast libraries of games.
Tloewald|11 years ago
I don't know if the XBox 360 would have the same problem if I bothered to hook it up to the internet. Frequently installing a new game requires a lengthy patch to the OS, but I don't get over-the-air updates so overall my XBox 360 experience is better.
Davertron|11 years ago
eloisant|11 years ago
rocky1138|11 years ago
While this might not have helped him here (his firmware sounded really old), they've already taken this sort of annoyance into account, and so at future get-togethers, even if there's an update, you'll just be able to go and play.
fit2rule|11 years ago
dpcan|11 years ago
Most consoles ship with full games. If the OUYA is only shipping with free trials, they aren't really competing.
Side-note, the home page of their website, what are they thinking? It looks like a stop sign. Or a "come back later". I literally went to their site earlier this year and thought it wasn't live yet, didn't bother going any further - until today. Shoot, it might as be one of those giant red circles with a line through it saying "go away!"
damon_c|11 years ago
You're right... this should be put in the 'bad ideas' portfolio for web design instructors to use in future lessons.
Even after you know that it is not a "come back later", it still feels wrong and awkward having to ignore your natural instincts to leave, as you look past the big red circles and explore the site!
sp332|11 years ago
Pxtl|11 years ago
donw|11 years ago
hahainternet|11 years ago
It's a shame enough people didn't realise this from the start, but $150 is not a lot of outlay for what I got in return and when the games eventually move on to Ouya 2, I will just put XBMC on it and it's still a great device.
billyhoffman|11 years ago
While modern $99 "video pucks" like AppleTV, Roku, or Amazon are good streaming clients for NetFlix, etc, they utterly suck at playing files from a local network. Ouya + XMBC is an incredibly option for this use case, now that Boxee is gone.
Florin_Andrei|11 years ago
So, it's the new Wii?
ebbv|11 years ago
This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead.
Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the novice's favor, to the point where if they land a few lucky hits they win.
I've never played FIFA, but I'd be surprised if it didn't have some way to skew the balance of the game in favor of the novice.
prawks|11 years ago
vertex-four|11 years ago
joshdance|11 years ago
muyuu|11 years ago
He's right, these games are meant to be played by people with about the same experience, or at least a decent amount of experience and then a bit of handicap.
They're not exactly Mario Party.
ch0wn|11 years ago
arrrg|11 years ago
For example, the recently released Sportsfriends (a collection of four local multiplayer games): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zh5EXf4rpo
nnnnni|11 years ago
sp332|11 years ago
sehugg|11 years ago
jonny_eh|11 years ago
KVFinn|11 years ago
If you have a PS4 and more than one other local person to play with occasionally you must be Sportsfriends right away!
sp332|11 years ago
lingoberry|11 years ago
sp332|11 years ago
trustyhank|11 years ago
bovermyer|11 years ago
programminggeek|11 years ago
TruthSHIFT|11 years ago
voltagex_|11 years ago
reidmain|11 years ago
sp332|11 years ago
greggman|11 years ago
I probably should have posted this early but I've been working on a library/framework for making party games with lots more than 4 players.
Players use their smartphone as the controller but all look at the same TV to play the games.
I've only had a couple of "larger" sessions so far but have had 17 player space wars and 14 player bomberman like. Going to try for 30 to 40 players in a few days.
http://greggman.github.io/HappyFunTimes/
dclowd9901|11 years ago
pomfpomfpomf3|11 years ago
raldi|11 years ago
jsnell|11 years ago
danielweber|11 years ago
Rayne|11 years ago
rocky1138|11 years ago
1) Flipping the unit on its side so that the power button is facing me and the wires stick up in the air. Apparently the original run units had a metal base which affected signal from the antenna.
2) Switching the Bluetooth controllers to get the priority no matter if there's a game downloading or not. This feature/option was included in a recent update and you can find it in the Controllers->Settings menu.
I have a chocolate brown Kickstarter-backer model and I no longer get controller lag.
Neff|11 years ago
[1]: https://support.ouya.tv/anonymous_requests/new
notlisted|11 years ago
nebulous1|11 years ago
higherpurpose|11 years ago
NicoJuicy|11 years ago
Haven't gamed with it, but perhaps i should after reading this.
everyone|11 years ago
edit: What people actually mean when they say " an AAA game" is "a game with a very large development budget"
cwyers|11 years ago
bane|11 years ago
bitwize|11 years ago
Similar ambiguity exists around "hardcore" which means roughly the intersection of gamers who seek out challenging games, gamers who play competitively online, and gamers who enjoy adult content like sex and violence.
dpeck|11 years ago
ghshephard|11 years ago
mwfunk|11 years ago
Hopefully the "an" is a typo and you don't actually pronounce AAA as saying the letter "A" three times. :)