Gaming Console Ouya Raises $1 Million on Kickstarter in 8 Hours

It's interesting how negative the original HN thread is. Everything from "it's too underpowered" to straight up "Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair" and calling them "amateurs".<p>What is up with that? HN is supposed to be about the cutting edge and it just dumped all over this project which then went on to get $1million in 8 hours. I suggest a sizable part of the HN "doesn't get it". And this saddens and bugs me. I come to HN for the news and also very much the commentary. But suddenly there seems like this big anti android pro iOS bias and a bunch of curmudgeons running things.<p>This device looks really cool, has amazing potential, is near free for a console and clearly has amazing demand but HN put out the hate. What gives?<p>This isn't the first time I've noticed this. Recently several neat android related announcements have gotten some strongly negative commentary here and even none announcement iOS articles have gotten glowing praise. :(

Link to the actual project: <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console?ref=live" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-...</a><p>Pretty pathetic that The Atlantic is just embedding the project's video without even an actual link. Why the hell do so many sites still do this?

Current thread on OUYA: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223627</a><p>I'm not surprised they raised a million dollars, but I think they're surprised since they had to bump up the availability of the 99 dollar pledge level a few hours ago when they ran out.

Underpowered? I think not. Look at Nintendo DS: 67mhz Arm9. Who cares? Only developers because it's a pain in the butt to program for the thing. Other than that it delivers fun games and prints money(or so the meme says).<p>Quad core and an easy API seem like 1000x a better choice than a ps3 with 8 cores, a not so easy api, and a 10,000usd dev kit.<p>Yes, graphics won't compete with the next gen games, but there's more to a game than eye candy.

I almost never give to fundraisers online but I've dropped several hundred on this - that's how much I believe we sorely <i>need</i> a popular, open, indie-oriented gaming device that isn't a regular PC. (And before anyone scoffs, remember Diaspora?)<p>Will OUYA be the one to pull it off? With some skin in the game I'm hoping so, but the key thing to pick up from their copy is how strongly they're looking for <i>validation</i> rather than just money. So even if you think their implementation is lame at the moment, if you believe in the <i>idea</i> of an indie console, I'd encourage you to give the $10 just to boost the backer count (which I think is more important in the long run). And I'd encourage them to add a lower donation tier for exactly this reason too..

Try refreshing the Kickstarter page a few times. Jumps up $100-500 each refresh. Insane!

So I have a question (Because I'm genuinely curious and I'm not sure where to go to get this information.):<p>What successful projects received kickstarter funding above 100K? I've seen plenty of smaller successes, but I want to know if anyone who took one of these <i>huge</i> donation piles has delivered yet.

1) Developers will probably not make any money on games for it. Its a problem for Android too. Many good iOS games will never be ported over to Android because of this. And some developers have left Android after products didn't make any money. Its a culture problem, plus pirates made it a terrible market to make money 2) Open system easy to hack, its going to rub FPS multi-player games useless. Its already killing the PC gaming of that type. 3) Licenses and patents, and honestly I can't see those specs being sold at that $99 price tag period. 4) Lack of marketing ability to attract the players to make the market large enough to attract developers 5) The few open source titles that are decent games are so late 1990's quality in graphics. Though graphics are very highly over rated, game play is much more important and there just isn't that many with great game play. 6) Intense pressure from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will knock it down in lawsuits if it ever did gain traction. Or just out right buy the company to kill it. 7) As mobile phones continue to push the envelope in performance, the few good games it might be able to offer will evolve around those more powerful phones and will probably leave that thing in the dust with ability to play games a year or 2 down the road. Mobile gaming ability and phone power is increasing exponentially, unlike the slow pace of desktops which had that kind of growth a decade ago. 8) When they do start having to make good money to solve these problems, to cover costs of the machine, litigation's, patients, paying developers to make games worthy enough to attract paying customers, the very people it cater to that nitch Linux Open blah blah group will turn away from it.<p>This is why desktop gaming has always been the domain of Windows PC's, and for mobile its the domain of iOS and for portable its still a nice race between Sony and Nintendo, both of which is hurting over iOS gaming.

What is to stop someone from making their own? I foresee custom app stores and custom games along with people building one with a terabyte of internal storage.<p>Or why not just build a PC with an OUYA OS partitioned drive?

On the bright side, because this is basically phone hardware, they can probably manufacture at a price point that makes this viable.<p>...or maybe not. People aren't really great as making estimates, and that's a <i>lot</i> of $99 devices (10k odd units so far?), but you'd like to think they've thought that through.<p>Good luck to them. They've obviously tapped into something that resonates with a lot of people~<p>(...and if it doesn't work out, watching the rage face of people who think they've bought something and then realize kickstarter <i>isnt a shop</i> when they get <i>nothing</i> is going to be fun to watch...)

I'm curious why they're designed their own controller and not just going with something from, say, Logitech. Seems like one less thing to worry about.

This looks like a really awesome idea, but I can't help but wonder if they are walking into a patent minefield?

Will this device be able to play audio with less than 20 milliseconds of latency?

I have a feeling we have a new contender for most money ever raised on kickstarter. See you in 29 days! 40m? Just a guess. Congrats ouya!

It seems BI has an exclusive interview with them:<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kickstarter-xbox-2012-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/ouya-raises-1-million-kicksta...</a>

Let the ass kicking begin. Great idea, goog should fund em because this is one of the ways they can one-up iOS.

Awesome, I just pushed them past $2 mil

Hopefully Google will allow them access to the Play Store, otherwise devs will have to repackage the apps for Ouya, which I'm sure it's not going to be a huge deal if this thing takes off. But it would be a nice gesture from Google, and it would be in their interest, too, especially if they have no plans of doing the same thing with Google TV set top boxes.

Cool project, but at $99 for a console and controller they must be operating at a loss, right? Does anyone have any insight into production costs of something like this? It could change the way we think about the "amount raised".