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The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later
- hahainternet 12y agoThis 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.
- billyhoffman 12y agoYes. This. Ouya + XMBC is amazing. 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.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoI've been having a lot of success with the Chromecast lately. The more I think about it, the less I want an intelligent TV or yet another device (which needs updates and config) and controller (which needs its batteries replaced and fished out of the couch cushions) attached to it. A dumb receiver like the Chromecast seems to be the superior solution. I have no shortage of smart devices, I don't need another. I just need an easy wireless way to get whats on my smart devices onto my dumb TV. Hard to beat at $35, or $29 at Best Buy right now due to a sale. That's practically sales tax on the AppleTV plus the more or less required AppleCare.
- billyhoffman 12y agoI think that being able to "fling your screen" like Chromecast or Airplay is a future I'd like.
- JoshTriplett 12y agoAgreed. I don't want a smart TV or a media-player box, I want a smartphone/tablet/PC and the ability to easily get its content onto a TV. And if you're inclined to tinker, the Chromecast is a ton of fun: it's actually running a full browser engine, and you can send it a page to view. That page can then use things like WebRTC streaming.
- andybak 12y agoTwo things I would like to put forward in counterpoint: 1. Communal browsing of content - you sometimes want to browse available content on the big screen so everyone can join in. That means menus and UIs on the TV not the device 2. Controls with physical buttons have two advantages. A well-designed remote is much easier to learn and use without needing to look at it. Secondly - games controlled via a touchscreen when you're actually looking at the TV are a fairly unpleasant experience. I do want a smart TV with a physical controller. I also want Chromecast/Airplay etc. Different beasts.
- hershel 12y agoBut what about latency ?
- fossuser 12y agoRoku paired with Plex works extremely well (thanks to Plex). Plex reminds me of VLC in how well it does exactly what I want it to do. I'm a fan. https://plex.tv/ https://plex.tv/
- baldfat 12y agoChromecast works with Plex
- genericuser 12y agoI've heard really good things about the Amazon Fire TV + XMBC (Gotham) from multiple sources at this point. Haven't tried it myself admittedly.
- Osiris 12y agoThat's what I'm doing and it works very well. As a media device, it's the best option I've found. Built-in wireless, fast CPU, lots of RAM, supports Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu, XBMC, Pandora, and more. Roku has more channels available, but doesn't have any options for streaming content over a LAN. I played a few minutes of Minion Rush on the Amazon Fire TV. It had some laggy moments, certainly not the gaming experience that they claimed it would be.
- dublinben 12y ago>but doesn't have any options for streaming content over a LAN This is simply not true. Plex has been available on the Roku for years. It's one of the most popular channels.
- Osiris 12y agoPlex is terrible. It requires transcoding audio and video on the fly, which requires a hefty media server. XBMC decodes everything on the fly on the local box requiring no transcoding.
- ripb 12y 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 I bought a Chromecast for $40 and the Plex iPad app for $5 and can now sit at the tv, controlled by the iPad, and stream content from my HDD flawlessly.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago> 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. So, it's the new Wii?
- NicoJuicy 12y agoI also bought an Ouya, but for some reason.. I only use it for Plex... Haven't gamed with it, but perhaps i should after reading this.
- everyone 12y agoI 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"
- cwyers 12y agoOh, so it's apparently not meaningless, and not even confusing, as you were able to figure out its meaning right away.
- vdaniuk 12y agoYeah, it is confusing, because "very large development budget" is extremely ambiguous.
- everyone 12y agoNo. Read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_Gaming_industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_Gaming_industry The terms supposed meaning is about various aspects of game quality and also implying some kind of scale. But it is commonly used in a very vague way to denote "game with very large budget" or "game from huge publishing house" Things which have nothing to do with quality and are vague to the point of meaninglessness.
- cwyers 12y agoLook, if we're going to stop using terms just because they don't mean what they originally meant when first coined, we lose about three-quarters of the English language. That ship has sailed.
- bane 12y agoAs it turns out, "AAA" is shorter to say and type than "a game with a very large development budget", hence its common and semi-nonsensical usage.
- dpeck 12y ago
- bovermyer 12y agoThis article put the Ouya back on my radar. I'll have to look into it.
- higherpurpose 12y agoI 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.
- lhnz 12y agoThe 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.
- Davertron 12y agoIt'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.
- Xylakant 12y agoWell, 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.
- nkozyra 12y agoI don't think anyone would argue the PS3 is the perfect party console, either. I bought the PS3 and Wii around the same time and obviously the "party console" prize went to the latter - particularly early on it seemed like every third time I put a game in there was 15 minutes of firmware and software updates.
- Xylakant 12y agoIt's not like the Wii never needed any firmware updates either.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ebbv 12y ago> 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.
- vertex-four 12y agoI 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.
- sanxiyn 12y agoI find this phenomenon very interesting. I mean, obviously, you won because you did right things. You would have lost if you didn't. By definition, handicap should be set so that you have an even chance of winning. This may be a cultural thing? In Go, handicap is a normal part of the game and everybody (but see below) is fine with using it. In Chess, people seem to detest handicap and insist on even game. I live in South Korea, and I visited US Go club when I travelled there, and I was extremely surprised to find that some Go players there insisted on even game. Why would they do that? I mean, if you normally need 4 stones handicap in Go, you have exactly zero chance to win without handicap. What fun is that?
- ritchiea 12y agoThe chess/go difference in accepting handicaps may be due to chess's culture of memorization & opening study. Also since in chess all the pieces begin the game on the board (rather than players alternating placing stones) if you it's hard to reconcile that any deviation from the standard game (e.g. removing pieces as a handicap) "doesn't look like chess."
- lingoberry 12y agoVery 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.
- sp332 12y agoOuya just had their retail launch last June. Less than a year would be fairly soon to pack it in.
- ch0wn 12y agoWired 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.
- arrrg 12y agoLocal multiplayer is also coming back on other platforms, by the way. For example, the recently released Sportsfriends (a collection of four local multiplayer games): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zh5EXf4rpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zh5EXf4rpo
- reidmain 12y agoTowerfall is also on the PS4.
- sp332 12y agoAnd the version on PS4, "Ascension", is better than the version available for Ouya right now. They say the Ouya version will eventually get the extra features. http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/16/5108514/is-towerfalls-move-to-ps4-and-pc-a-big-blow-for-ouya http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/16/5108514/is-towerfalls-move...
- jonny_eh 12y agoYup, in June. In the meantime, I recommend Duck Game. A new 4-player 2D combat game that just launched exclusively on ouya: https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/ https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/
- raldi 12y agoIs anyone else finding this article's pale-gray-on-white color scheme very difficult to read?
- jsnell 12y agoYes, but that's color scheme of half the internet these days so you just have to deal with it :-/ I recommend this bookmarklet: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html#zap_colors https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html#zap_colors
- danielweber 12y agoI see no text at all, whatsoever, even if I highlight. Chrome on Windows.
- dpcan 12y agoMy 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!"
- damon_c 12y ago"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!
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoYou mean the http://ouya.tv http://ouya.tv website? Didn't think it was quite that bad - a red tinted smiley face. What I did see $99 - made me assume that it was only available in USA. Turns out you can get it in UK/CA. UK price is ~$170.
- Pxtl 12y agoPoint. At launch, the Nexus 7 included $25 of Play money.
- sp332 12y agoJust 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.
- 12y ago
- nebulous1 12y agoI just can't see the OUYA surviving the Fire TV
- trustyhank 12y agoA 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 )
- programminggeek 12y agoThe 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.
- sehugg 12y agoThese are all fun games, but the Ouya's problem is that these are all the same games the author would have been playing a year ago.
- jonny_eh 12y agoThat'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/ https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/
- notlisted 12y agoDo 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.
- Rayne 12y agoI 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.
- Neff 12y agoYou 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. [1]: https://support.ouya.tv/anonymous_requests/new https://support.ouya.tv/anonymous_requests/new
- rocky1138 12y agoMine suffered from the same. Two things fixed it: 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.
- dclowd9901 12y agoIs this the same wololo who hacks Vitas and PSPs? If so, this guy's a legend in the handheld hacking community.
- pomfpomfpomf3 12y agoYes.
- KVFinn 12y agoThe 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!
- sp332 12y agoBut 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!
- TruthSHIFT 12y agoHis favorite Ouya game, Hidden in Plain Site, is also available for Xbox 360 and it's totally excellent.
- voltagex_ 12y agoVote for it to come to Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=206372301 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=206372...
- greggman 12y agoI 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. http://greggman.github.io/HappyFunTimes/ http://greggman.github.io/HappyFunTimes/