[Ouya General] Grifter357:
Moderately Disagree

I was not a Kickstarter investor, but I had a friend buy me one from the US when it came out on retail.

I do appreciate the objectives of the OUYA creators to make an "open gaming platform". "Open" in the sense that no licensing fees are needed to buy the SDK and a dedicated DEV-unit to develop games for it. The SDK (ODK) is freely available and every OUYA unit is also a Dev-unit...

Having a proprietary store is kinda a drag, but I guess it is a necessity otherwise OUYA won't have any control on the quality of the content. Side-loading is always an option and I doubt they have any plans of locking down the console so the OUYA will first and foremost remain to be a hackers'/modders' console...

The games on the OUYA range from nice A+ titles that showcase the capability of the console (Wraithborne, Chrono Blade), fun titles that are simply fun to play on a console with a controller rather than a tablet with a touchscreen (Knightmare Tower), old AAA titles ported over to snag the nostalgia crowd or the heard-about-the-legends-about-that-game-but-don't-want-the-hassle-of-emulation crowd (Final Fantasy III), fun/hilarious couch/party games (You Don't Know Jack, Hidden in Plain Sight), cool, retro-esque and/or nice-looking indie games (Syder Arcade, Deep Dungeons of Doom), to WTF?!? games and utter crap... Which I guess describes just about every "App Store" in existence... (except maybe the Palm/HP/LG webOS App Catalog, which is/was simply sad... especially from the point-of-view of a old PalmPilot Professional/Palm IIIxe/Treo 650 user)

I personally use my unit to play the few (currently about a dozen) games from the OUYA store that I like, play some emulated games, and use the unit as a XBMC "media player"...

Obviously, if you want to use the OUYA for something more than an game console, you need to be "this high" <like the amusement park rides> on the geek/enthusiast scale... But more and more utilities are being posted in the OUYA store to help manage the console without too much additional effort, lowering the "requirements"... A simple file manager (that uses the OUYA controller buttons), even a tweaked-version of XBMC is now available in the OUYA store...

Parents who were kids during the '80s and '90s who enjoyed playing the consoles of that time would certainly love to introduce their kids to the joys of old-school gaming (but on a nice HDTV display... :) )... The current crop of pre-teen kids (at least here in the Philippines among my friends) enjoy good games, regardless of the platform, be it PC, PS3, Xbox 360, GBA, NDS, PSP, iPad/iPhone, Android Phone/Tablet. One of my friend's kids, an eight/nine-year-old who enjoys playing WWE on the Xbox 360 was mesmerized when I showed him an emulator-run NEO-GEO side-scrolling arcade shooter ala Gradius.... Never mind that the aspect ratio was 4:3 on their 32" 1080p HDTV and the game was displaying retro 16-bit graphics, he immediately pestered me for the controller and had to be reminded (15mins later) that it was a school night and he needed to do his homework... :laugh: )

Bottom line is, good games are enjoyable, whatever the platform... For people who can't afford a modern console or even people who have several modern consoles, the OUYA is a viable gaming platform. Although it remains to be seen just how long they (OUYA) can turn a profit enough to sustain the store as well as further development of the platform...

As for being a media player, the Vizio Co-star mentioned seems to be a nice device. Unfortunately, it's not available here in the Philippines. Believe it or not, the OUYA has turned up in some retail stores here (the retail price here is about USD $125 ($99 + tax + shipping + margin)... The Android media players available here are cheap no-name China knockoffs of cheap Chinese brands whose designs were shamelessly copied from the branded players that are being manufactured in China... :laugh: So software updates / support for these are a joke (if they are even available)... These are strictly as-is-where-is devices... So an OUYA really is quite a step up compared to these (as well as the Realtek/Sigma-based media players like Popcorn Hour, Measy, Xtreamer, WD-TV, etc).... :D

Having a controller instead of a real remote control is kinda awkward, being that you need two hands to navigate the controls, but since that's how you navigate menus in a console game anyway, anyone who has used a game console won't be that lost with it. Of course, people who where adults during the '80s and earlier (as well as non-"techie" people) will probably be confused by the controller... which kinda restricts the market for it... Although I must say that after having seen the UIs of those other Android media players here (as well as their "remotes"), I am not impressed... :D

Cheers!

^_^