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Gaming Console Ouya Raises $1 Million on Kickstarter in 8 Hours

80 points by drubio 14y ago

endianswap 14y ago
Current thread on OUYA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 I'm not surprised they raised a million dollars, but I think they're surprised since they had to bump up the availability of the 99 dollar pledge level a few hours ago when they ran out.
- blahedo 14y ago
  And surely they'll have to bump it again or introduce a new level; they're already back down to 800 remaining (currently out of 10,000), still with 29 days to go. The $99 pledge level wasn't even in there initially; I think they were expecting the bulk of their pledges to come from low-end pledges where people reserve a username. They're also out of etched boxes ($225 level) and even most of the developer specials ($700) are gone.
  - Danieru 14y ago
    Considering that at first they had just enough slots to reach their goal I think they are managing the launch to maximize unit sales and hype. What I am surprised about is that they did not raise the price above $99 with the second top up (20,000 @ $99). Thus $99 must not be a below cost loss leader. My guess is that they will offer as many $99 units as possible. Their balancing act is to offer an unbounded number of units while maintaining the air of exclusivity. Offer too many units at one time and people might thing they are missing their sales target. With this much hype and sales they should have decent leverage with developers. I got the impression that a few developers they talked to were on the fence. Their first update could be interesting. Exciting times eh?
AshleysBrain 14y ago
Try refreshing the Kickstarter page a few times. Jumps up $100-500 each refresh. Insane!
mindstab 14y ago
It's interesting how negative the original HN thread is. Everything from "it's too underpowered" to straight up "Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair" and calling them "amateurs". What is up with that? HN is supposed to be about the cutting edge and it just dumped all over this project which then went on to get $1million in 8 hours. I suggest a sizable part of the HN "doesn't get it". And this saddens and bugs me. I come to HN for the news and also very much the commentary. But suddenly there seems like this big anti android pro iOS bias and a bunch of curmudgeons running things. This device looks really cool, has amazing potential, is near free for a console and clearly has amazing demand but HN put out the hate. What gives? This isn't the first time I've noticed this. Recently several neat android related announcements have gotten some strongly negative commentary here and even none announcement iOS articles have gotten glowing praise. :(
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > It's interesting how negative the original HN thread is. Everything from "it's too underpowered" to straight up "Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair" and calling them "amateurs". I think there's a significant proportion of the HN userbase that responds to things like Kickstarter funding with indignation, because it neatly circumvents the VC funding process that so many of us have suffered through. It's almost a "How dare they raise so much money without jumping through hoops like I did?"
  - mindstab 14y ago
    So people find a better way to get money and the old hardened crowd here gets cranky? How fast we grow into curmudgeons. I need to find a new "hacker news" that still has the spirit and would say "holy cow, congrats, amazing work, and we should look to see if we can exploit that next time too". So much for the spirit of the entrepreneur and hacker. Seems old school corporate crankiness. :(
    - heretohelp 14y ago
      Lamernews? If not that, then would you use it if I made an alternative?
saym 14y ago
What is to stop someone from making their own? I foresee custom app stores and custom games along with people building one with a terabyte of internal storage. Or why not just build a PC with an OUYA OS partitioned drive?
lbrdn 14y ago
Cool project, but at $99 for a console and controller they must be operating at a loss, right? Does anyone have any insight into production costs of something like this? It could change the way we think about the "amount raised".
- joering2 14y ago
  how about 3 folks @ $10,000. Its great to see that KickStarter has such a network effect!!
- saraid216 14y ago
  The thread on the Kickstarter itself has significant discussion on that question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627
- beagle3 14y ago
  The RaspberryPi is NOT selling at a loss for $35. Neither is the AppleTV at $100 (or $80, which you can find new every other week on eBay). Nor are the Roku boxes that sell at $50-$100 for 720p-1080p playback and many, many others. Neither, for that matter, is the Huawei Android 3G phone at $80. It can even be profitable at $100, if (and that's a huge if) they know what they are doing.
  - lbrdn 14y ago
    No need to yell beagle (or was that a Borat impression). I am simply curious about how much a device like this would cost a small company to build per unit on a first run. AppleTV isn't a fair comparison given the efficiencies of scale and what not, nor is it running video games as far as I know. And while I don't know much about RaspberryPi, their website states that the "graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance" which I imagine Ouya is trying to exceed. Moreover, RaspberryPi doesn't come with a fancy shell or a controller.
mtgx 14y ago
Hopefully Google will allow them access to the Play Store, otherwise devs will have to repackage the apps for Ouya, which I'm sure it's not going to be a huge deal if this thing takes off. But it would be a nice gesture from Google, and it would be in their interest, too, especially if they have no plans of doing the same thing with Google TV set top boxes.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  From the standpoint of their ultimate success, the key is their installed base. If they have say 20k or 30k machines out there, will developers care enough to target them? It wouldn't matter if they were just another Android platform, they'll have Android games from the mass market. But if they plan to make money off revenue sharing with devs, they gotta have the machines out there. I'm impressed that they're going to get this thing done, I just hope the get enough made to survive.
- trotsky 14y ago
  They're not going to be putting the play store on there for the same reason amazon doesn't put it on the fire - their model is to provide the payment/content ecosystem for the ol' 70/30 split.
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    On a perfect world, they'd get a special partnership with google to get an extra OUYA tab to the play store. For OUYA dedicated games, which would show on OUYA devices and pay OUYA developers with that. Even if google would sacrifice their 30% for it. It still seems like this would be the ideal deal for all parties: users, developers, google and ouya.
jcdavis 14y ago
Link to the actual project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-... Pretty pathetic that The Atlantic is just embedding the project's video without even an actual link. Why the hell do so many sites still do this?
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  It's inexcusable. Blogs, traditional journalism's favorite whipping boy, will at least cite their sources.
- jcdavis 14y ago
  Update: can't seem to edit my original post, but there is now a link, someone came to their senses
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
guscost 14y ago
Will this device be able to play audio with less than 20 milliseconds of latency?
- mtgx 14y ago
  Not sure, but if they update it to Android 4.1+, it should have 12 ms or lower.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - guscost 14y ago
    I'm worried the new figure also depends on the hardware in the Nexus, but that would be absolutely splendid news.
mtgx 14y ago
It seems BI has an exclusive interview with them: http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kickstarter-xbox-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kicksta...
comatose_kid 14y ago
Let the ass kicking begin. Great idea, goog should fund em because this is one of the ways they can one-up iOS.
shadowmint 14y ago
On the bright side, because this is basically phone hardware, they can probably manufacture at a price point that makes this viable. ...or maybe not. People aren't really great as making estimates, and that's a lot of $99 devices (10k odd units so far?), but you'd like to think they've thought that through. Good luck to them. They've obviously tapped into something that resonates with a lot of people~ (...and if it doesn't work out, watching the rage face of people who think they've bought something and then realize kickstarter isnt a shop when they get nothing is going to be fun to watch...)
duey 14y ago
This looks like a really awesome idea, but I can't help but wonder if they are walking into a patent minefield?
- visualphoenix 14y ago
  Agreed. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130152/the_ten_most_important_video_game_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130152/the_ten_most_im... The patents on video game controllers alone might be enough to kill them. Remember the Sony/Microsoft rumble debacle?
checoivan 14y ago
Underpowered? I think not. Look at Nintendo DS: 67mhz Arm9. Who cares? Only developers because it's a pain in the butt to program for the thing. Other than that it delivers fun games and prints money(or so the meme says). Quad core and an easy API seem like 1000x a better choice than a ps3 with 8 cores, a not so easy api, and a 10,000usd dev kit. Yes, graphics won't compete with the next gen games, but there's more to a game than eye candy.
unimpressive 14y ago
So I have a question (Because I'm genuinely curious and I'm not sure where to go to get this information.): What successful projects received kickstarter funding above 100K? I've seen plenty of smaller successes, but I want to know if anyone who took one of these huge donation piles has delivered yet.
- wmf 14y ago
  Diaspora delivered something, although not in the timeframe they claimed.
petercooper 14y ago
I almost never give to fundraisers online but I've dropped several hundred on this - that's how much I believe we sorely need a popular, open, indie-oriented gaming device that isn't a regular PC. (And before anyone scoffs, remember Diaspora?) Will OUYA be the one to pull it off? With some skin in the game I'm hoping so, but the key thing to pick up from their copy is how strongly they're looking for validation rather than just money. So even if you think their implementation is lame at the moment, if you believe in the idea of an indie console, I'd encourage you to give the $10 just to boost the backer count (which I think is more important in the long run). And I'd encourage them to add a lower donation tier for exactly this reason too..
Athens79 14y ago
1) Developers will probably not make any money on games for it. Its a problem for Android too. Many good iOS games will never be ported over to Android because of this. And some developers have left Android after products didn't make any money. Its a culture problem, plus pirates made it a terrible market to make money 2) Open system easy to hack, its going to rub FPS multi-player games useless. Its already killing the PC gaming of that type. 3) Licenses and patents, and honestly I can't see those specs being sold at that $99 price tag period. 4) Lack of marketing ability to attract the players to make the market large enough to attract developers 5) The few open source titles that are decent games are so late 1990's quality in graphics. Though graphics are very highly over rated, game play is much more important and there just isn't that many with great game play. 6) Intense pressure from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will knock it down in lawsuits if it ever did gain traction. Or just out right buy the company to kill it. 7) As mobile phones continue to push the envelope in performance, the few good games it might be able to offer will evolve around those more powerful phones and will probably leave that thing in the dust with ability to play games a year or 2 down the road. Mobile gaming ability and phone power is increasing exponentially, unlike the slow pace of desktops which had that kind of growth a decade ago. 8) When they do start having to make good money to solve these problems, to cover costs of the machine, litigation's, patients, paying developers to make games worthy enough to attract paying customers, the very people it cater to that nitch Linux Open blah blah group will turn away from it. This is why desktop gaming has always been the domain of Windows PC's, and for mobile its the domain of iOS and for portable its still a nice race between Sony and Nintendo, both of which is hurting over iOS gaming.
wtracy 14y ago
I'm curious why they're designed their own controller and not just going with something from, say, Logitech. Seems like one less thing to worry about.
savrajsingh 14y ago
I have a feeling we have a new contender for most money ever raised on kickstarter. See you in 29 days! 40m? Just a guess. Congrats ouya!
bertomartin 14y ago
Awesome, I just pushed them past $2 mil

80 points by drubio 14y ago

Current thread on OUYA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 I'm not surprised they raised a million dollars, but I think they're surprised since they had to bump up the availability of the 99 dollar pledge level a few hours ago when they ran out.

blahedo 14y ago
And surely they'll have to bump it again or introduce a new level; they're already back down to 800 remaining (currently out of 10,000), still with 29 days to go. The $99 pledge level wasn't even in there initially; I think they were expecting the bulk of their pledges to come from low-end pledges where people reserve a username. They're also out of etched boxes ($225 level) and even most of the developer specials ($700) are gone.
- Danieru 14y ago
  Considering that at first they had just enough slots to reach their goal I think they are managing the launch to maximize unit sales and hype. What I am surprised about is that they did not raise the price above $99 with the second top up (20,000 @ $99). Thus $99 must not be a below cost loss leader. My guess is that they will offer as many $99 units as possible. Their balancing act is to offer an unbounded number of units while maintaining the air of exclusivity. Offer too many units at one time and people might thing they are missing their sales target. With this much hype and sales they should have decent leverage with developers. I got the impression that a few developers they talked to were on the fence. Their first update could be interesting. Exciting times eh?

AshleysBrain 14y ago

Try refreshing the Kickstarter page a few times. Jumps up $100-500 each refresh. Insane!

mindstab 14y ago

It's interesting how negative the original HN thread is. Everything from "it's too underpowered" to straight up "Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair" and calling them "amateurs". What is up with that? HN is supposed to be about the cutting edge and it just dumped all over this project which then went on to get $1million in 8 hours. I suggest a sizable part of the HN "doesn't get it". And this saddens and bugs me. I come to HN for the news and also very much the commentary. But suddenly there seems like this big anti android pro iOS bias and a bunch of curmudgeons running things. This device looks really cool, has amazing potential, is near free for a console and clearly has amazing demand but HN put out the hate. What gives? This isn't the first time I've noticed this. Recently several neat android related announcements have gotten some strongly negative commentary here and even none announcement iOS articles have gotten glowing praise. :(

w1ntermute 14y ago
> It's interesting how negative the original HN thread is. Everything from "it's too underpowered" to straight up "Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair" and calling them "amateurs". I think there's a significant proportion of the HN userbase that responds to things like Kickstarter funding with indignation, because it neatly circumvents the VC funding process that so many of us have suffered through. It's almost a "How dare they raise so much money without jumping through hoops like I did?"
- mindstab 14y ago
  So people find a better way to get money and the old hardened crowd here gets cranky? How fast we grow into curmudgeons. I need to find a new "hacker news" that still has the spirit and would say "holy cow, congrats, amazing work, and we should look to see if we can exploit that next time too". So much for the spirit of the entrepreneur and hacker. Seems old school corporate crankiness. :(
  - heretohelp 14y ago
    Lamernews? If not that, then would you use it if I made an alternative?

saym 14y ago

What is to stop someone from making their own? I foresee custom app stores and custom games along with people building one with a terabyte of internal storage. Or why not just build a PC with an OUYA OS partitioned drive?

lbrdn 14y ago

Cool project, but at $99 for a console and controller they must be operating at a loss, right? Does anyone have any insight into production costs of something like this? It could change the way we think about the "amount raised".

joering2 14y ago
how about 3 folks @ $10,000. Its great to see that KickStarter has such a network effect!!
saraid216 14y ago
The thread on the Kickstarter itself has significant discussion on that question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627
beagle3 14y ago
The RaspberryPi is NOT selling at a loss for $35. Neither is the AppleTV at $100 (or $80, which you can find new every other week on eBay). Nor are the Roku boxes that sell at $50-$100 for 720p-1080p playback and many, many others. Neither, for that matter, is the Huawei Android 3G phone at $80. It can even be profitable at $100, if (and that's a huge if) they know what they are doing.
- lbrdn 14y ago
  No need to yell beagle (or was that a Borat impression). I am simply curious about how much a device like this would cost a small company to build per unit on a first run. AppleTV isn't a fair comparison given the efficiencies of scale and what not, nor is it running video games as far as I know. And while I don't know much about RaspberryPi, their website states that the "graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance" which I imagine Ouya is trying to exceed. Moreover, RaspberryPi doesn't come with a fancy shell or a controller.

mtgx 14y ago

Hopefully Google will allow them access to the Play Store, otherwise devs will have to repackage the apps for Ouya, which I'm sure it's not going to be a huge deal if this thing takes off. But it would be a nice gesture from Google, and it would be in their interest, too, especially if they have no plans of doing the same thing with Google TV set top boxes.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
From the standpoint of their ultimate success, the key is their installed base. If they have say 20k or 30k machines out there, will developers care enough to target them? It wouldn't matter if they were just another Android platform, they'll have Android games from the mass market. But if they plan to make money off revenue sharing with devs, they gotta have the machines out there. I'm impressed that they're going to get this thing done, I just hope the get enough made to survive.
trotsky 14y ago
They're not going to be putting the play store on there for the same reason amazon doesn't put it on the fire - their model is to provide the payment/content ecosystem for the ol' 70/30 split.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  On a perfect world, they'd get a special partnership with google to get an extra OUYA tab to the play store. For OUYA dedicated games, which would show on OUYA devices and pay OUYA developers with that. Even if google would sacrifice their 30% for it. It still seems like this would be the ideal deal for all parties: users, developers, google and ouya.

jcdavis 14y ago

Link to the actual project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-... Pretty pathetic that The Atlantic is just embedding the project's video without even an actual link. Why the hell do so many sites still do this?

Wingman4l7 14y ago
It's inexcusable. Blogs, traditional journalism's favorite whipping boy, will at least cite their sources.
jcdavis 14y ago
Update: can't seem to edit my original post, but there is now a link, someone came to their senses

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

guscost 14y ago

Will this device be able to play audio with less than 20 milliseconds of latency?

mtgx 14y ago
Not sure, but if they update it to Android 4.1+, it should have 12 ms or lower.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- guscost 14y ago
  I'm worried the new figure also depends on the hardware in the Nexus, but that would be absolutely splendid news.

mtgx 14y ago

It seems BI has an exclusive interview with them: http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kickstarter-xbox-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kicksta...

comatose_kid 14y ago

Let the ass kicking begin. Great idea, goog should fund em because this is one of the ways they can one-up iOS.

shadowmint 14y ago

On the bright side, because this is basically phone hardware, they can probably manufacture at a price point that makes this viable. ...or maybe not. People aren't really great as making estimates, and that's a lot of $99 devices (10k odd units so far?), but you'd like to think they've thought that through. Good luck to them. They've obviously tapped into something that resonates with a lot of people~ (...and if it doesn't work out, watching the rage face of people who think they've bought something and then realize kickstarter isnt a shop when they get nothing is going to be fun to watch...)

duey 14y ago

This looks like a really awesome idea, but I can't help but wonder if they are walking into a patent minefield?

visualphoenix 14y ago
Agreed. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130152/the_ten_most_important_video_game_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130152/the_ten_most_im... The patents on video game controllers alone might be enough to kill them. Remember the Sony/Microsoft rumble debacle?

checoivan 14y ago

Underpowered? I think not. Look at Nintendo DS: 67mhz Arm9. Who cares? Only developers because it's a pain in the butt to program for the thing. Other than that it delivers fun games and prints money(or so the meme says). Quad core and an easy API seem like 1000x a better choice than a ps3 with 8 cores, a not so easy api, and a 10,000usd dev kit. Yes, graphics won't compete with the next gen games, but there's more to a game than eye candy.

unimpressive 14y ago

So I have a question (Because I'm genuinely curious and I'm not sure where to go to get this information.): What successful projects received kickstarter funding above 100K? I've seen plenty of smaller successes, but I want to know if anyone who took one of these huge donation piles has delivered yet.

wmf 14y ago
Diaspora delivered something, although not in the timeframe they claimed.

petercooper 14y ago

I almost never give to fundraisers online but I've dropped several hundred on this - that's how much I believe we sorely need a popular, open, indie-oriented gaming device that isn't a regular PC. (And before anyone scoffs, remember Diaspora?) Will OUYA be the one to pull it off? With some skin in the game I'm hoping so, but the key thing to pick up from their copy is how strongly they're looking for validation rather than just money. So even if you think their implementation is lame at the moment, if you believe in the idea of an indie console, I'd encourage you to give the $10 just to boost the backer count (which I think is more important in the long run). And I'd encourage them to add a lower donation tier for exactly this reason too..

Athens79 14y ago

1) Developers will probably not make any money on games for it. Its a problem for Android too. Many good iOS games will never be ported over to Android because of this. And some developers have left Android after products didn't make any money. Its a culture problem, plus pirates made it a terrible market to make money 2) Open system easy to hack, its going to rub FPS multi-player games useless. Its already killing the PC gaming of that type. 3) Licenses and patents, and honestly I can't see those specs being sold at that $99 price tag period. 4) Lack of marketing ability to attract the players to make the market large enough to attract developers 5) The few open source titles that are decent games are so late 1990's quality in graphics. Though graphics are very highly over rated, game play is much more important and there just isn't that many with great game play. 6) Intense pressure from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will knock it down in lawsuits if it ever did gain traction. Or just out right buy the company to kill it. 7) As mobile phones continue to push the envelope in performance, the few good games it might be able to offer will evolve around those more powerful phones and will probably leave that thing in the dust with ability to play games a year or 2 down the road. Mobile gaming ability and phone power is increasing exponentially, unlike the slow pace of desktops which had that kind of growth a decade ago. 8) When they do start having to make good money to solve these problems, to cover costs of the machine, litigation's, patients, paying developers to make games worthy enough to attract paying customers, the very people it cater to that nitch Linux Open blah blah group will turn away from it. This is why desktop gaming has always been the domain of Windows PC's, and for mobile its the domain of iOS and for portable its still a nice race between Sony and Nintendo, both of which is hurting over iOS gaming.

wtracy 14y ago

I'm curious why they're designed their own controller and not just going with something from, say, Logitech. Seems like one less thing to worry about.

savrajsingh 14y ago

I have a feeling we have a new contender for most money ever raised on kickstarter. See you in 29 days! 40m? Just a guess. Congrats ouya!

bertomartin 14y ago

Awesome, I just pushed them past $2 mil