The one for the Kinect is worth watching.

The Evolve video is great too.

You weren't kidding about the Kinect one.

The VR one is pretty great, man.

this is probably the best gaming agitprop channel out there, and i mean that in the nicest way possible.

and seconding the evolve video, holy shit was that game emblematic of the hype/failure gaming ouroboros.

Yeah I think people set their expectations way too high.

On the other hand the creators could have tried just using a good current smartphone chip and running it on a version of android so it could just use anything off the android market instead of depending on getting people to develop specifically for it.

Just out of curiosity I checked eBay and it looks like you can get one of these for around BUT people seem to be having results buying them, loading them up with emulators and roms, and then reselling them as plug and play retro-game consoles for a few hundred dollars.




IF I was making a bit more money I'd probably grab one so I could stick it in a closet and then pull it out in 15 years and outhipster everyone. Because you know this thing will end up being an iconic failure of its era, like the Atari Jaguar. It has everything going for it in that regard. Just in general, I think crowdfunding failures are going to be a collectors' goldmine in a couple decades.

I'm not going to lie, there's an original 2012 Kickstarter one in the box for right now on eBay, and the contrarian hoarder in me kind of wants to get it just to keep the old PC Jr's in the closet from getting lonely.

What doomed Ouya from the start is that unlike some of the other attempts at droid consoles (the GameStick and then that all-game razer tablet thing I can't remember the name of), Ouya required developers to make specific ports of the games for it. Not just controller support, but basically a whole, newly compiled release built for the specific specs. This meant that devs couldn't just take a droid game, add some basic controller support, then launch it; they had to make an Ouya specific version. When I heard this, I knew then it would basically mean the Ouya was ripe for failure because it puts this weird barrier on how easy it was to publish for.

Yeah, I didn't follow it too closely but it definitely looked doomed from early on

But Amazing Frog really won me over.

Oh yeah, another thing...they developed the machine to have DRM on its video output making it useless for recording unless you do work arounds and use software (rather than a hardware recorder) which was and is massively confusing. Even the Xbox One deactivates the DRM on the video when you're just playing a game or something.

OH wow, I did not know about the DRM.

http://kotaku.com/5925510/the-piracy-problem-why-ouyas-biggest -strength-may-be-its-biggest-weakness

More importantly, googling that I discovered that Ouya is still in existence, the company still apparently exists, and they are actively hiring.


Mind = blown.

You laugh, but this was the era of the Kinect where consoles were trying to be this "transformative" medium where YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER and you use your voice to turn shit on and off. This was seen as retro-vogue or some shit.

Did you know you can play games on your TV? Just play the game on your PC or 3DS while having a friend stand behind you filming the game with their phone. Then simply livestream the phone video to a website like Twitch. Meanwhile, purchase a second PC and hook it up to your television, and then go to your Twitch channel on that PC. Now there is a game on your TV!

Give it to me so I can play Amazing Frog!

Amazing Frog was kind of fun actually (played it at a convention once)

Yeah, I mean it looks terrible but it looks fun terrible and I'm not joking when I say I'm tempted to buy a cheap secondhand Ouya largely just to play it.


Is it even possible to get games for the thing anymore, though? r did it have some kind of Apple Store style proprietary gateway thing that's gone? The newest console I own is a N64 so I don't know how that stuff works on consoles these days.

I've never had the chance to play it but it looks like it's basically Goat Simulator except it came first and is completely unironic.

I crowdfunded exactly one thing (the Axoloti) and it was really late to ship but over all the whole experience was good, and it was pretty cheap (a bit more than the production version you can get now, but only like more) and works well although I rarely use it.


So I might as well quit while I'm ahead and never fund anything again.

OOOOHHHHH YEEEEEEAAAAAAA.....CHICK-A-CHICK-AHHH!

SNAP INTO IT

The games maybe, but the hardware would never have handled it and the control lag would make most people sick

People who believe in "disruption."

People who watch TED talks unironically.

People who don't know about the whole Open Source vs Free Software schism and don't know that "open source" was about converting the free software movement into a profit driven, industry friendly free labor pool.

So typical low info tech-libertarians.

Which is why I think in a decade or to the Ouya will be one of the absolutely iconic failures of its particular moment, because it kind of perfectly encapsulates the zeitgeist of the Obama era.

Thanks a lot, now I want one.

"it kind of perfectly encapsulates the zeitgeist of the Obama era."

Ha, now that you mention it...