Your telling everyone that your here to show us that there is a good alternative from the big brother consoles. With the nextGens costing an arm and a leg, and being nothing more than glorified media centers, it's a perfect time to step up and shine. But if you fail (failure is not an option I assume) then I doubt any [gamers] will invest in such a concept ever again.
No pressure right?!? :-)
An interesting anecdote:
Finally received the Ouya last week after waiting for months (that felt like years heh). I ordered an extra controller just because I knew I wanted my company to do some multiplayer testing with it. Well, I setup the system in my family's living room to give it an initial test. Normally all the game consoles go into our game room (a 400 sq foot room I had specially built as a shrine to video gaming for the family and myself) however I didn't have the time to find it a spot amongst the other consoles and really needed to see what it could do. As I waited for updates, and waited for downloads, I was finally able to play some of the featured games. As the rest of my family slowly accumulated into the room with the same words of entry "whoa, what is that????", I eventually lost priority to the console as the two controllers were passed around and now in high demand.
On alternating friday's we have game nights; not with the kids, but with adults. Friends come over and we play table top games of all sorts. Well this week, we all agreed to try out the Ouya as a party game console. Problem was, I was 2 controllers short. Sure, I had xbox 360 controllers, and I had PS3 controllers, and I had one Green Throttle Atlas controller but I really didn't want to have everyone sitting there while I tried to figure out if the system would work with them (I happen to know the Ouya documentation isn't easy to access and is sparse in quantity). I quickly called around (Chicago/Milwaukee area) to see what local tech/game stores had. To my surprise, they all had the Ouya! The word of note in that sentence is "had" as they ALL were sold out. Granted, they probably didn't have much stock to begin with (it is a very new, and risky, venture), but still..... I finally found a single store that said the had 2 controllers (only 2) left in stock. After a quick "hold them for me, I'll be there in 10 min", I raced to the store and saw the wasteland of a display they had setup for this console. It was bare, picked clean with the exception of these 2 lonely little controllers sitting, calling to me, with a light shining down from above.
Returned home, paired the controllers, and the party began. Of the games played were "Bomb Squad", "Tower Fall", and "You Don't Know Jack". Lots of laughing (Bomb Squad is hilarious), lots of trash talk (YDKJ is one of my favorites from the 90's), and lots of close victories were had by all. It was as if there was a sporting event happening there was so much yelling, laughing, taunting, oooo's and ahhh's and awwwwwe's. The time flew by, the sun fell in the sky, and it was time for the friends to depart. A few common departing phrases were "That thing is tiny", "It only costed how much?", "Where did you get it", and more importantly: "I'll have to pick one of those up!".
- Download times are horrid. Note: Given the reception of this system thus far, I fully expect the servers to be overloaded. Please don't take it as a complaint, just a vent :-)
- Direly need a way to expand on storage! Bard's Tale takes up ~4gb of space and now I cannot download any more games (I think I have 7 total games installed). I have a slew of external drives and USB memory sticks laying around and having to uninstall one thing to play another will be a major pain (specially given the aforementioned download times). Additional note: If I could disconnect that drive and take it to a friend's house to play the games, it would be a plus, but since the console is so darn portable I don't see that as all that needed. Locking the drive to the console for the sake of DRM is fine.
- I need a way to manage the download/update queue. If download times are an issue, I need a way to prioritize what's downloading/updating.
- A knowledge-base of some sort is needed. Example: I would like to pair these other controllers (ps3, Green throttle) at some point but don't want to search outdated information from other early adopters from 6 months ago. I need current information.
- The "Discover" area is a mess. I see 170+ game count on your website and all I see when browsing the "Discover" section is like ~30 games (many of which repeat in some categories). Featured (developer sponsored), Recent (new releases), Staff Picks (picked by Ouya staff), Trending (most downloaded), Popular (player rated), Rotation (weekly rotation, like 20 from the whole collection, to give some notice to less marketed titles), and then a sub menu for specific genres that can be browsed would be ideal. Do like the Itunes app store is doing. They do a great job in this area, no reason to re-invent that wheel.
- Occasional controller lag. Knowing the technology involved (bluetooth) I know there is no way around it. It only makes this list because it's a peeve to loose against my youngest son in Bomb Squad because the controller said I was jumping off the map edge haha!
- Controller design still falls short: A. Sometimes the OUYA buttons get stuck in because of the battery cover holding it. B. no way to plug in the controller for charging (on like a convenience rack like we can do with Xbox and PS controllers). C. "Why is that mouse cursor moving around? Wait, what? There's a touch pad on here? Where the heck?"
In conclusion, the nextGen consoles are trying to be too much for me. They want to sell me gimmicks, they want to sell me entertainment, they want to take over my living room. Above all, they want to sell me the same thing they sold me the year before, and the year before that. They want me to buy the same re-branded game I bought 5 years ago (with 1 new feature). Hell, Nintendo comes out with a new, marginally better, console with all sorts of promise every year. They know I will buy it because I loved Zelda, and have loved Zelda since I first played it when i was 12 (now, close to my 40's, I promised myself after skyward sword that I wouldn't do this anymore). None of the good AAA and indie titles get any traction and we all know why. I think Ouya has the ability to make this a big change in the suffocating video game industry. The planets are in alignment and the conditions are perfect. Lets not drop the ball, keep the momentum going!
darkhalf
Posts: 2Member
Comments
I do think it should be further up, it's crazy to have to go down an entire page to get to the genres, there's just too many "featured" sections for genres to come after them all.