Ouya Developers Share Their Experiences 88
RogueyWon writes "Four months after the launch of the Ouya micro-console, Gamasutra has pulled together a round up of the experiences of indie developers who have brought their games to the platform. There's both positive and negative news; developers seem to like the ease of porting to the platform, but have concerns regarding the approach that its marketplace takes. Perhaps most crucially, sales of games on the platform are far from stellar."
Re:Steambox will murder it with steam sales (Score:5, Informative)
Steambox and Ouya address fairly different markets. Steambox approaches the console niche from above, Ouya from below. I think those little TV games boxes will be safe from competitors for a while unless Sony gets serious about its Vita TV. Of course that's ignoring the issue of whether there's enough of a market or development community for these devices in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, it's a play for the low end of the console market but Sony has the "last generation's model" incumbent advantage.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"I think Ouya would have been fine if it weren't for steam box."
I think both platforms are doomed. I already have a perfectly good platform for playing all of these games. I can't imagine anything less interesting to me that playing those games on my television. Add in crappier controllers, the lack of any other platform content, and that I have to pay for the privilege?
I don't think I'm alone in my total lack of enthusiasm. I'm finding it difficult to justify upgrading the PS3, which spends the vast majori
Re: (Score:2)
I can't imagine anything less interesting to me that playing those games on my television.
Have you imagined sitting in front of your TV with it turned off?
Re:Steambox will murder it with steam sales (Score:5, Funny)
I can't imagine anything less interesting to me that playing those games on my television.
Have you imagined sitting in front of your TV with it turned off?
With your kids, and hitting them?
Re: (Score:2)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/bonanzleimages/afu/images/0341/8013/100_4205.jpg
Re: (Score:2)
> Have you imagined sitting in front of your TV with it turned off?
All the time. I call it "reading in the comfy chair". And yes, it's far more interesting that playing Steam games on my TV. For instance, I'm currently about 2/3rds of the way through "Physics on the Fringe", which is highly entertaining.
Re: (Score:2)
I still find it weird that the games you've chosen to pay for suddenly become the most boring thing in the world when moved onto a large screen. I don't find my HDTV has that effect at all. Or perhaps I should just give in to the use of hyperbole.
Re: (Score:2)
I just set up a TV tray for a keyboard and mouse or plug in my Xbox 360 controller
Can you set it up so player one uses mouse and keyboard and player two uses the controller?
Re: (Score:2)
Can you set it up so player one uses mouse and keyboard and player two uses the controller?
you do realize that this is less and less a popular option on console games, right? they want us all to have our own console and our own console account, etc etc
Re: (Score:2)
you do realize that this is less and less a popular option on console games, right?
True, I was disappointed when Animal Crossing: City Folk lacked split-screen despite the Wii having 8 times the clock speed power of the Nintendo 64 console for which the first Doubutsu no Mori game was released. And reviewers chastised The Conduit for having a short single-player campaign because they had no chance to test its online-only multiplayer before the servers opened up. But the Call of Duty series still supported two-player split-screen the last time I checked my cousin's Xbox 360, and fighting g
Re: (Score:3)
Valve already has PC gamers on board. The Steambox isn't for them, by and large.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you play a lot of games then a console is
Doom (Score:2)
[OUYA's] business model is too much a hurdle for straight ports.
What did you mean by this? If you're referring to the requirement that all games have some free-to-play functionality, consider 1990s shareware games like Doom. Its first episode was free (as in beer).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
[OUYA's] business model is too much a hurdle for straight ports.
What did you mean by this? If you're referring to the requirement that all games have some free-to-play functionality, consider 1990s shareware games like Doom. Its first episode was free (as in beer).
I am referring directly to something a dev said in TFA. The games need a free portion. Be it a playable demo(which has seriously fallen out of fashion), a f2p model(which may also not be there to begin with) or a paywall somewhere along the line.
If you simply had designed the game as a straight-forward indie title to be sold cheaply then you won't meet the Ouya criteria by a simple port. You will have to introduce them. And given the cost/effort benefits whne you just about make a profit on a straight port
Add a Buy Now button (Score:2)
Such a UI issue is up to a game's developer to solve. A smart developer would list the total price of all "entitlements" (paywalls) in the game's description: "First mission free; rest of game for $3.99." Then the game's main menu would have a button below "Play"
Re: (Score:2)
Not all games are this easy to do this for.
Imagine trying to make a "demo" for something like The Stanley Parable, or Journey, or Gone Home. Even games such as Counter-Strike would have a strange demo, or Mario Party. When do you stop the user? How much do you let the play before asking for money?
Nothing is stopping people from putting a big "buy" button on the first screen, but not all games are easily sliced up into individual levels.
Re: (Score:2)
One simple mechanic that some Ouya games use is that you can only play for a limited time every day, say 10-20 minutes. That works very well for puzzle games or games like Counter Strike. A short story based game where someone might simply play through the story in small pieces, 10 minutes a day, could maybe be limited by a total ever play time. So from the first time you install it you can only play x minutes (enough to get through max a 1/4 of the game or so)
Re: (Score:2)
Demos take time and money to create. And they need to run on your potential buyer's machine without any issue. I can remember a couple of demos in the 90ies which I couldn't get to run yet t
Forces HDCP on developers (Score:2)
watch a couple of YT videos
That's an area where I admit OUYA failed. Its only video output is HDMI with HDCP that a game's developer doesn't appear to be able to turn off.
Re: (Score:2)
watch a couple of YT videos
That's an area where I admit OUYA failed. Its only video output is HDMI with HDCP that a game's developer doesn't appear to be able to turn off.
Oh, the Ouya is brilliant. They use abundantly available and established stock electronics. The development tools are free and also established. IMHO they underestimated the effect of their "game needs to be partially free" rule and their decision to design their own controller is outright idiotic. Designing something like a controller has to be the master discipline of consumer electronics. I would have tried for a 70$ price point and bundled it with something reasonable. A partnership with Logitec, Razer,
Re: (Score:2)
I would have tried for a 70$ price point and bundled it with something reasonable. A partnership with Logitec, Razer, whatever would have been much, much better.
I agree with your second point, but not the first. There's no way they could hit $70 with a bundled controller. Seen the price for Project Mojo? Two-fiddy. Granted, that's the next-generation processor, but seriously. That's two and a half times the price of the Ouya. A complete wood-killer.
I think a better option would have been to offer the console without a bundled controller, for $80, and get PS3 controller support right. It was flaky and not supported by all games. But the PS3 controller actually has m
Re: (Score:2)
Good games already support it. Measly iOS ports and Gameloft games struggle. There is no need for a dedicated "Android controller". USB BT HID does exist and is supported by Android. If you layer your game properly then you can support those on-screen-controls and HID properly. I'll mention Gameloft again since they are the worst offender in that area. Thank
Re: (Score:2)
PS3 Controller already IS a proper Android controller.
no, it really isn't. It's not universally supported.
The support is really good.
no, it really isn't. It doesn't work on any Android after 4.1.1. It also dominates bluetooth, you can't use any other bluetooth peripheral at the same time. This is unacceptable.
You plug it in via USB to pair it and the rest is done by Bluetooth.
And then it doesn't work. I've had it work on GB and on one 4.1.1 build, and it fails everywhere else. I've used both the usual PS3 joystick app as well as USB/BT Joystick Center.
It could very well be that stock Android broke PS3 support a couple of versions ago but I had no problems on my TF201 on 4.0.
It's broken. So, it's broken.
Re: (Score:2)
It's broken. So, it's broken.
Whoa hold up, it's broken, throw it away and start from scratch!
It's broken because Google threw bluetooth away and started from scratch. Well, kinda. Enough to break pretty much every bluetooth-related workaround used by anyone for anything tricky. And so the apps are also having to be thrown away, or at least, their magic parts.
In turn, bluetooth is broken because Google throws away the progress made in recent versions of BlueZ. There's support for the PS3 BD Remote in there, the PS3 controllers, Wiimotes, and other good stuff. None of which can be used with Android p
Re: (Score:3)
You can buy games that cheaply on a console right now, in the form of physical disks. If (as is expected) they start to go all-digital, similar pricing will come across.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The sad thing is, this is something the Ouya was supposed to provide. You were supposed to be able to use your wired 360 controller, wireless 360 controller with the PC adapter dongle or a compatible dongle, a PS3 controller, the Ouya controller, or any mix thereof. And it sort of worked; for some reason, though, it didn't really. The idea was that the Ouya controller API would abstract away all the differences.
What worked is that all the controllers would actually connect and be recognized as controllers.
Games not on Steam yet (Score:2)
AFAIK, the steam box will be able to play any game that you can play on PC.
The Steam Machine ships with SteamOS, a distribution of GNU/Linux. Support for games designed for Windows that do not work in Wine is unknown.
At the very least, you can play every steam game on it.
Does this include indie games currently sold outside of Steam that Valve happens not to have approved yet?
Spontaneous multiplayer (Score:2)
I can't imagine anything less interesting to me that playing those games on my television.
So when you already have friends over at your home [slashdot.org], what do you drag out to do for fun? Taking turns in a single-player game on a desktop PC isn't very fun, and asking them to drive home and go get their gaming laptops isn't very practical. Playing games on a PC hooked up to a TV is much more spontaneous than a LAN party. Or would you claim that video games are for one player and tabletop games are for two to four [slashdot.org]?
Re: (Score:1)
So when you already have friends over at your home, what do you drag out to do for fun?
A bottle of wine
Are games skipped *because* they're on PC? (Score:2)
Frankly there aren't any decent local multiplayer games on PC to be worth using that anyway
Other than these [co-optimus.com]?
people don't want local multiplayer pc games.
Why don't they? Say someone finds out about a particular indie game. She visits the game's web site and sees "PC: Buy Now! Consoles: We are seeking a publisher to bring $TITLE to consoles." Is she interested, or does she think to herself "It's for PC? Too bad. I'll try something from a major studio instead."
Re:Steambox will murder it with steam sales (Score:4, Insightful)
Said that, the micro-console market is also it's own market, with a even more niche set of gimmicks, needs and expectations. Plus, on a pure hardware point of view, to compare a $900+ machine that needs both arms to be lifted against a $99 embedded device that fits on the palm of your hand is nonsense. Just because everybody owns a certain platform, that doesn't make support for that platform mandatory. Vision(and the guts to fight the odds and make it a reality) is more important and without it many business, including gaming business wouldn't exist. Said that, that is exactly where the problems with the OUYA begin: they don't have a vision. I could write pages pages on the problems associated with their strategy but just to expose the tip of the iceberg, marketing is nonexistent and support from firmware and network services to exclusives and first-party games is totally lacking. Consumer media devices, in particular gaming devices, just cannot live without those two things. And on top of that there is that PSVita TV, which is in the same price range, has similar hardware, but has much better software and the PlayStation brand behind it.
PC in one room and TV in another (Score:2)
We all own a PC so why own a Ouya?
Because the least common denominator has a PC is in one room and a TV in another. Some genres aren't well adapted to a desktop PC, especially those built around multiplayer with gamepads and one large screen.
Why Ouya is Doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
I got a preorder launch Ouya. It stunk on ice. Crash! Crash! Crash! And no support for any displays with anything other than VGA, 720p, or 1080p resolution, even though there is a scaler in there, but maybe that was just my pet issue. Thing is, for LOTS of people Ouya's output looks like poop on their device because Ouya wouldn't recognize their display resolution (loads of TVs don't actually use one of these resolutions as native, and even more monitors) and then it would render internally at 1080p, but scale the output down to VGA.
The way they have differentiated themselves from other devices is to have their own store. It stinks on ice, too. Maybe they've made some major improvements since I dropped mine, but you couldn't even see your download queue, which would clear itself under some mysterious but trivially accidentally replicable conditions. But the basic fundamental problem is that now that google has announced support for gaming, and Ouya is doing things their own way, they've segmented themselves out of the market. Meanwhile, everyone else's devices will have play store game support. This one reason is enough to doom Ouya.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's underspecced and can't do anything different to your laptop or desktop PC.
If it worked, it would be an acceptable deal for $100.
It's shit.
That's why it's not an acceptable deal for $100.
Notably, the controller completely punts on handling touch. It doesn't even have gyros. It would have been better to punt on the controller, and work on making PS3 controllers work properly.
When I had my Ouya, a bluetooth keyboard would inevitably work its way towards being controller #1. Then you couldn't play any games until you unpaired the controller and the keyboard, and repaired the controller. And th
I love my Ouya (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to give a second oppinion I can say that I really enjoy my Ouya that I bought in August. I payed $149 (one extra controller) and honestly almost felt it was repaid after the first weekend of playing games and having a blast with my girlfriend (Hidden in plain sight, Bomb Squad, Suction co-op). And now that I've discovered XBMC and spend countless hours playing Nimble Quest and Knightmare Tower the cost is completely written off.
I really like the simpleness of most Ouya games. I just don't have the time to get into some long complicated game any more, so most new AAA titles don't attract me. But my previous console was a Super Nintendo, so my reference frame might be different from many hard-core gamers :) In contrast to many other commenters here I also like the fact that it has its own store. That means that all the games I find has been tuned to work for the hardware. If it used the Google Android app-store I imagine the titles that worked well would drown in all the games that didn't make any sense to run without a touch screen.
I have experienced some un-responsiveness with the controllers which went away after a reboot, but none of the other problems you describe. Maybe many of the issues that the Kickstarter supporters experienced in the beginning has been fixed providing me with a generally more positive experience. Also I just feel completely amazed at the power you can pack in such small item and for such a small cost. The same goes for the games, I mean, most of them are cheaper than my lunch!
So, thank you very much for supporting the Ouya on Kickstarter, allowing people like me to enjoy it. I'm sorry it didn't live up to your expectations. For me it really doesn't matter if the Ouya is "doomed" or not, I'm enjoying mine plenty anyway.
Shared experiences (Score:2)
Okay, so, this one time, I thought I was getting with this hot chick, but I was soooo wasted that I...
Oh, you had something specific in mind. Right.
Really? "indie" is better than "independent" ? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's what many (not all, but many) independent games developers call themselves, so I don't think you've got much of a right to object to the terminology.
Re: (Score:2)
My face right now: ;_;
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
yeah even those who have hired several people, taken investment money from public fundraisings and use multi hundred million companies for distribution call themselves indie, by those criterias id-software is an indie company...... those used to be called studios and before that just game development companies.
you know what's also stupidly funny? indie record labels. indie record labels which are owned by universal etc.
Re: (Score:2)
BMC is buying their way into "craft" beer. Small business always looks cool, so either big business buys in to what on the surface might appear small; or a small company grows to the size where they are in danger of losing the "coolness" factor, so they try to fake it.
Explain something to me: (Score:2, Interesting)
If a Kickstarter is very sucessful, does it not mean that the majority of people interested in the project has already committed money to it? Thus, huge Kickstarter successes are less likely to do well financially after it is launched?
Re: (Score:2)
Probably in this case, but not necessarily in all cases. If your Kickstarter ends quickly then there's clearly a lot of pent up demand left to satisfy when you make it a retail product. However Ouya kept expanding its Kickstarter until, as you observe, it had completely mopped up all the available demand.
OUYA use (Score:1)
I use my Ouya as a XBMC player, much beter then my raspi for that.
As for the games there might be a few gems in there but I havent found them.
Balked on Openness (Score:2)
His attitude about custom firmware was shocking as well.
http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?3193-Let-OUYA-know-we-NEED-to-be-able-to-boot-to-recovery [ouyaforum.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
isn't that irrelevant if they would make the bootloader boot up the os from either internal or from sd? but since they want a closed device with an os that asks for cc number when you set it up.....
Re: (Score:3)
Without wishing to go overboard on defending the company (I'm yet to be convinced by their console and would agree with you on recoery mode), is their attitude on custom firmware really "shocking"? I mean, my interpretation of that quotation is:
"We're not ruling it out, but we have finite time, finite resources and a lot of other things to focus on. Custom firmware is something that matters an awful lot to a very small number of people. We'll get around to it when we can, but it probably won't be any time s
Re: (Score:1)
I think the it wouldn't be surprising if they didn't promote "hackability" as a selling point. I don't care that my xbox isn't hackable: no one ever claimed it was. But when you tell me that something is user modifiable, I expect it to be rather easy to do and have the needed support to restore back to original software.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not surprising, but it is bait and switch. They promised openness and hackability and delivered neither. Their APIs are open, and they are being deprecated by Google forthwith so whoopdeeshit.
Re: (Score:1)
Which is probably a fair enough comment, given we are not talking about some vast multinational company here.
But compare it to the Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console [kickstarter.com]
After people began calling Al Sutton out over this, he made things even worse by implying t
Can the Ouya play games? (Score:4, Interesting)
I installed XBMC on mine, and been using it exclusively as a HTPC.
Been thinking about installing MAME or something similar though, but so far I haven't played a single game on mine.
Oh and by the way, even with good ventilation, it gets hot!
Re: (Score:2)
The Final Fantasy 3 remake is about the only really good game I've found. I didn't get into Final Fantasy until Final Fantasy 8. I was able to go back and play FF7 but anything older than that I could never tolerate graphically. This remake is worthwhile. Of course it's also available on PS Vita and Nintendo DS, but I'm not much of a mobile gamer.
Of course, PS Vita TV is also supposed to be roughly $99 when it launches in a few weeks too (Japan only for now though), and due to it sharing most of the lib
Sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sales are far from stellar?
Therefore we should immediately shut the company down, fire everyone, confiscate all Ouyas, sue them for the money they raised through crowdfunding, bulldoze the building, clear everything away but the dirt, churn saltwater into the ground, fence it off with biohazard signs and cement it over with six feet of pig iron, broken rock and mortar.
You are not allowed to be anything but a five-time Super Bowl champion. Anything less and you should be exiled forever and your name erased from the history books, you fucking loser.
Wall Street will only tolerate two companies in every market (except banks, then you can have five). If you're not one of those companies, you will always be portrayed as "not quite Ivy league" in the media until you go out of business. If you stick around long enough, one of your C-level people will be found in a hotel room fucking a chimpanzee.
Apple and Microsoft, iOS and Android, Google and Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter, Wal-Mart and Target, Verizon and AT&T, Disney and Dreamworks, Mattel and Hasbro, and so forth. It's about monopoly profits. Not free markets.
This country and society have become so obsessed with sour, angry greed. It's sickening.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, damn those pesky independent game developers who really would quite like it if they could make a living by selling their games. The blood-sucking parasites who put time into making games and then sickeningly say they'd like to focus their attention on the platforms where their sales might actually let them break even. The absolute epitome of sour, angry greed, aren't they?
Congratulations - you win the "Angry Communist Fuckwit of the Week" award. On slashdot, that's quite an accolade.
Re: (Score:1)
If you'll lean waaaaaay back and use your binoculars you might see the point as it sails past.
My Ouya (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently bought an Ouya myself. Having looked at the system for a bit its not really THAT bad, but you have to go into it knowing the limitations. It's not an Xbox or a Playstation. Its basically a toy for tablet level games but just gives you a way to play them with a controller (which despite the explosion of tablet/mobile games is still a better way to play many things).
The only real games I've used mine for have been Final Fantasy III and emulating consoles. It has worked well for that.
Considering that my original motivation was that I wanted another XBMC box and setting up another Raspberry Pi would have been around $75 (with case, remote, power, etc), I figured that the extra $25 to have a basic "console" wasn't bad. I certainly won't be tossing out my "real" game systems any time soon though.
Re: (Score:1)
I absolutely love mine for XBMC, Crunchy Roll, Plex, and VLC. I know they aren't games, but I would rather watch my videos on my TV. I use XBMC video addons to watch all my shows on Penny Arcade TV, Retroware TV, TED Talks, etc. from the comfort of my couch.
Good for indies (Score:1)
Ouya is good for indies : No membership fee, No 'Greenlight', a *free* QA on your submitted games : They are not just testing if the app is stable, they test the whole game, find bug in the menus, etc.. : It worth a 1000$ Q/A from a professional testing company. To me, the plan is to ship on Ouya, get QAed, and release on other platforms afterwards. So long life to Ouya!
Re: (Score:2)
No membership fee, No 'Greenlight....
And no sales.
Hmm (Score:2)
Games sales on openish source Kickstarter hobby platform...low. Whodathunk?