The problem with your original comment[1] is that many people feel it has potential you're not only not giving it credit for, but are actively trying to sabotage its chances of success.

The crux of your comments are two-fold: (1) if OUYA succeeds, it'll be the Facebook/Zynga console that preys on the poor to line the pockets of the rich, and (2) if it fails, it hurts Kickstarter and Kickstarter projects.

The view that "the vast majority of" the games of OUYA will be "built on psychological manipulation" is the most deeply cynical and skewed views of indie games I've ever read. Maybe I'm biased: I follow indie game developers a lot, I read their forum comments and blog posts, I listen to their podcasts, play many of their games (more than AAA titles) and watch YouTube play-throughs of others by other people. The message is the same: indie game developers are trying to do what they love while introducing something unique and interesting to the world, and those who go full-time want to make ends meet, a lot like many start-up founders. They're pretty frank and don't mince words, and not one of them has so much as hinted that they want to get rich by preying on the weak. This is counter to the Hacker News view, which is stories of indie games making millions of dollars, horrible tales of Facebook and Zynga using gambling psychology to nickel-and-dime the poor and addicted, and the Kickstarter gold rush being exploited by the smart and greedy. If I had to choose which view of indie games was reality, I'd believe the actual developers before the sensational stories that hit the Hacker News front page.

As for if OUYA fails, I can't say for sure what impact it will have, but it probably won't hold back Kickstarter or other promising Kickstarter projects. Should it follow the history of failed open consoles of development past, it will at most just fade into the background, never to be heard from again until somebody takes another stab at it.

The meatiest part of your original comment (ignoring the deep cynicism ingrained in it that people objected to) are the factors that may cause it to fail:

- Ability to deliver on its $99 cost, given most consoles sell at a loss that they recoup in titles.

As somebody who watches a lot of StarCraft 2 on TwitchTV and loves the variety of indie games, I'd consider the OUYA worthwhile even at 2-3 times this price.

- Anemic hardware: 8 GB for downloaded titles with only USB2 for expansion.

Thing like this can and may well be fixed; from OUYA's Kickstarter page[2]:

> Launching on Kickstarter – this isn't just a way to raise funds. It's our way of involving supporters from the get go. We want your feedback as well as your support.

They seem open to this kind of feedback.

- the "lazy" (I'd claim short-sighted) factor, e.g. color-coded only buttons are hard to communicate, especially for the color-blind

See above. Putting shapes on the buttons would be trivial, and the controller is stated to be a prototype, not a final product.

- lack of a killer app and seeming reliance on the Android Market to fill the gap

I expanded all the FAQ segments, ran a search on the page and didn't get one hit for "android market", so that's just speculation.

On not having a killer app, the big sell of OUYA to me isn't the presence of one really good game, but as a nexus of indie games I can quickly try and go through. I played many early versions of Spelunky[3] well before it became big through word-of-mouth. POWDER[4] isn't a massive commercial hit with tons of attention or press, but I've spent many fun hours with it. OUYA presents this one place where I can go through a ton of games to find gems like these; I don't have to worry about THE killer app if I can find MY killer apps.

Overall, as a person who plays lots of indie games and watches StarCraft 2, I see potential in OUYA, even if it can only deliver on half of its promises. The deeply scathing and cynical judgment you've passed is not only undeserved, but actively hurts it, which is pretty sad.

--

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224014

[2]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-...

[3]: http://www.spelunkyworld.com/

[4]: http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about