I saw this parsing issue yesterday and believe I know the cause. The background downloader still has some kinks to workout, but if you download a game in the background and then play another game this parsing issue state can occur. Steps to fix are as stated, which is to re-download the game again. Just a bug, we'll fix it.
@Piers, I've noticed when downloading games that wireless controller connectivity can get pretty bad, at least on the dev kits. I'm not sure if that applies to the retail units, but something I noticed when I went on a downloading spree and then immediately had trouble playing Gunslugs on the first night.
I saw this parsing issue yesterday and believe I know the cause. The background downloader still has some kinks to workout, but if you download a game in the background and then play another game this parsing issue state can occur. Steps to fix are as stated, which is to re-download the game again. Just a bug, we'll fix it.
Actually.. now that I think about it, that is probably what I did. I started downloading "the ball" (and as you know, it's huge). But my limited attention span/patience kicked in and I ended up downloading and playing something else while it was downloading.
I'm not sure what was downloading in my case, but I'm fairly sure that's the steps. We'll hammer it out so it's smooth and we get rid of unnecessary dialogs (i.e. "Install?", "Open/Done" and such.
@goodhustle, we haven't seen that, but we'll keep an eye out. If you can toss me a logcat that'd be great!
With this latest ODK+Firmware and libgdx with it's latest controller extension. Detecting Ouya returns false and polling controller buttons doesn't work either. Not sure what has changed but this latest firmware has broke libgdx controller extension. Any help or explanation would be great because I would like to upload my Ouya Create game Mad Monkeys to the store but the controls no longer work.
I think it's helpful to look at Google Play. They used to have a "New Apps" category, where all new apps would be shown. That was important, because it gives a chance for a new, unknown app or game to get discovered, even without marketing.
But they don't have that category anymore. Now, they only have "Top New". There's no way for users to naturally discover new unknown apps, which can be a problem.
Not correct. I don't have a ton of experience developing on Android yet, but it appears they only re-named "New Apps". Have a look, the list doesn't appear to be capped and the games at the bottom of it have somewhere between 1 and 100 downloads (looking in Top New Paid, there is Top New Free as well of course). There's 115 games in Top New Paid today, and as usual the ones around the 20s are sitting around the 1000 mark. Not too bad.
I like the idea of the Sandbox. Number of downloads doesn't reflect user satisfaction of a game at all. Lets hope the system can't be messed with. Another +1 for genres inside of the Sandbox, that area has to be as user friendly as possible to inspire people to explore new stuff (though obviously the point is for the developers to run some sort of successful social media or advertising campaign themselves to get the game out of there).
If genre's exist inside the sandbox, what is the difference between them and categorized titles (aside from 1 extra click to view the sandbox)?
Users need a compelling reason to go there. "These games are unproven" isn't really a compelling reason. In fact, it's a reason NOT to go there for many.
The catch-22.. non-organization isn't going to be terribly compelling either.
I suspect in the end, nobody but developers are going to go here. Perhaps setting up developer profiles are triggers whether it appears on the console or not. The trick will be to figure out a way to avoid the pitfalls of the peer review process that plagued XBLIG (opinions became non-objective and developers colluded to get their games approved regardless of the quality).
Perhaps OUYA could have final say of all titles that become eligible after the peer evaluation phase.
the whole concept of curated genres (even when the curator is the people) is bad to begin with. Better than nothing perhaps, but ultimately bad. Read my post here to find out why: http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/1097/sandbox-really/p1
The big problem with relying on curation is that its non-consumer focused and based on what a small group of people think is good, and not necessarily what YOU, the consumer, think is good. So while curation sounds great in concept, in reality its probably one of the worst ways to do things.
If ouya wants success in its store, then they need to focus directly around an individual consumer own specific taste. Dictating taste through curation will have limits to success and complete customer appeal.
You can think about it like this. Curator A has some hidden variables which determine his overall taste. Consumer B has 75% similar taste to Curator A and so has a certain probability per game pick of liking that particular game. Consumer C has only a 15% taste match with Curator A and will like fewer games picked by Curator A.
Even if you had a dozen wildly different Curators, each creating their favorite picks from the sandbox, the hidden variables are so complex and diverse that you would not hit 100% of the market, not even close.
Ok, so with this frame of reference of how a curator is good or bad. Lets consider anything which involves promoting things from the sandbox to genres effectively a curator. This Curator is the population at large via likes and has an average optimal taste match, it however, like an individual hand-picked curator by Ouya, fails to grasp large portions of the market. I haven't done the math, but I suspect it may be 50%+. This means that if your game doesn't match the average optimal taste, then your game is ignored.
What does that mean to game creators? If your game doesn't match the games already in the store in style and taste, don't bother publishing on Ouya, cause you will be ignored.
Yeah. I saw that post. You have some valid points. In fact, I agree with almost everything you said. Amazon is actually built on that approach. But in the interest of living within what they've established, sometimes it's fun to try to find ways to try to make it work. :)
I do agree that recommendations based on usage statistics and purchase history of people with similar buying habits might be a good way of improving the user's buying experience and will probably be critical to the success of their store. However, the issue the sandbox is trying to solve here is introducing products into the pool of eligibility that have never been used and have no quantifying factors for recommendation.
From that perspective, the "curation" happening is more to seed that process. On the surface, the approach is well intentioned and not super horrible.
But I think it's going to be difficult to crowd source this job over time with the regular non-developer users. Users spending money have no investment in sifting through a garbage heap to find the occasional gem unless they absolutely have to, nor is that the experience that OUYA probably wants for these consumers. Ultimately, consumers are going to care far less about being part of the approval process than using the console for what they bought it for: playing games and consuming content.
I think the sandbox is going to fall down in that regard. But it's a good concept for the short term. It's a difficult problem because even Amazon with it's monolithic inventory isn't really designed for "shopping" or identifying quality products. It's more designed toward knowing exactly what you're looking for by product or description. The extent of shopping is "top recommended in the categories you've bought in/people like you who've bought this also bought this" and promotional deals. App stores, on the other hand, want you to look around and stumble across things. If you are forced to "stumble upon" stuff at Amazon, it appears to be sorted by relevance of what you looked for, and then release date.
Honestly, I think they're attempting to solve an unsolvable problem. In the long term, they might be better off not curating (as you've suggested), and following the amazon model.
This means giving the developers as many tools as possible to allow them to market and easily get people in touch with their products (a way to buy and queue products through a website with sharable direct links to products would be a good start. A linkable developer product page would be good too, as well as a way of filtering that on the console itself). Perhaps "short codes" to enter in the console to get directly to a product or developer would be useful. A revenue sharing model of some sort might be good at some point too for users who want to promote other developer's games.
Trying to update the firm ware on my clear Dev OUYA from the old one to the new 1.01.58, and the download starts and then just freezes. Restart and the same issue. Have to re-input the Wifi password after each time, it doesn't seem to remember it after shut down.
Trying to update the firm ware on my clear Dev OUYA from the old one to the new 1.01.58, and the download starts and then just freezes. Restart and the same issue. Have to re-input the Wifi password after each time, it doesn't seem to remember it after shut down.
No download issues on any other devices.
Is anyone else having this issue?
-Digital Iris
Same issue, the download seems to just freeze. I've even switched to ethernet connection and same problem.
Actually I've now had the download sitting for about 30 minutes and it is showing progress, but this is extremely slow compared to all the past updates. There were also some SSL exceptions being thrown, I've reported them to [email protected]
Comments
@goodhustle, we haven't seen that, but we'll keep an eye out. If you can toss me a logcat that'd be great!
It was broken by the previous ODK+Firmware. forums.ouya.tv/discussion/969/odk-1-0-1-and-firmware-1-0-138
I sent you a pm as well.
I like the idea of the Sandbox. Number of downloads doesn't reflect user satisfaction of a game at all. Lets hope the system can't be messed with. Another +1 for genres inside of the Sandbox, that area has to be as user friendly as possible to inspire people to explore new stuff (though obviously the point is for the developers to run some sort of successful social media or advertising campaign themselves to get the game out of there).
Trying to update the firm ware on my clear Dev OUYA from the old one to the new 1.01.58, and the download starts and then just freezes. Restart and the same issue. Have to re-input the Wifi password after each time, it doesn't seem to remember it after shut down.
No download issues on any other devices.
Is anyone else having this issue?
-Digital Iris