The Ouya console, an ambitious attempt to turn what’s essentially an Android tablet into a tiny home console, has just seen is Kickstarter campaign draw to a close.
The final tally?
Oh, just a meagre $US8,583,769.
That’s from 63,303 backers, with by far the most popular funding option (with over 46,000 taking up the offer) being to spend between $US99-139 and get themselves a console when/if the Ouya is actually released.
OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console [Kickstarter]
And still no console to show from all that money.
Funnily enough, its the same outcome of every other kickstarter! GOSH!
jeeze, its hardly been a few weeks. By all means those funds are probably ages away from being released into their hands anyway
$8.5m!? I bet most of that will go on nice houses and cars for the guys running this pipe dream.
$8.5m is a lot of money for kick-starter, not a lot of money as far as seed funding goes for a project the scale they are attempting - I'm assuming this money will be used to try and attract serious investment, though they are going to have to get serious about the design of their ecosystem if its going to have a chance of working
If they're Smart about this project, Kickstarter won't be the only avenue for funding and investment they take.
Android has some good games, sure. But they (mostly) aren't the kind of games where you would grab a controller and sit in front of the TV.
This thing must be for streaming? Like OnLive etc?
I'll grant that "most" aren't, but thats because they are touch based as people build for phones... but what you have to remember is that the XPeria Play had/has a market (I got fed up with it being so massively underspecced, but the controller was awesome for gaming on the go). also there is a wealth of games that support controllers (Honeycomb or better support the PS3 control pad) and alot of people use this functionality. So buy a 200+ dollar tablet and a PS3 control pad just to tether it to your TV and use it as a gaming device, spend 150 for something that comes with a controller and is purpose built for gaming (eg menu interface ect). I can't wait till they ship and I get mine and can set it up with stuff like FF3 and Wave Runners and Spectoral Souls and hopefully this will drive more games development.
The only this Android need to do to be truly competative is find a way to share saved games between your devices. Play on the TV for a bit, transfer the save to your phone and go catch the train, transfer it back when you get home.... that would be awesome.
Why do you call it a tablet with a controller Luke? Do you call the Xbox a windows pc just because it runs a modified dumbed down version of windows?
Windows pc with a controller.
I dont get the negativity around this. Why's everyone so hard on them? They've come up with a great idea and they've been successful, good on them.
I feel the gaming community are some of the most pessimistic groups of people I've seen.
Especially with the anonymity of internet.
I put $150 down because I'll run xmbc through it and no doubt it will have some interesting games come out on it. And even if it does fail, then oh well, at least they gave it their best shot.
Pessimistic? You're way too kind, sir.
Because they have nothing better to do
needs games I would actually want to play on it before I get excited. Right now my interest goes as far as using it as a multi-function emulator box .
8.5 million dollars. For a game console, that will become obsolete in a few years. Do you know that sort of money could improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for decades or go towards some sort of medical research that needs it. I think we need to prioritise as a species before we can move forward. What a fuckin waste.
"For a game console, that will become obsolete in a few years"
What a ridiculously inane comment.
All damn game consoles are technically obsolete and old tech at launch anyway. I'm sure Microsoft and Sony spent a whole craptonne more cash on their development of consoles.
Oh and take your sanctimonious attitude elsewhere. How about you go and donate $99 to a charity and stop wasting your time posting garbage like this on gaming forums.
Kinect was developed as a new way to interact with games but has been used for medical purposes such as treatment (the activity acts as a form of physio) and patient monitoring (It can detect signs of problems with respect to how a person moves). The Ouya is a computer that just happens to have been primarily set up to play games but is the same as having a PC dedicated to gaming. I really don't see why people could not have beneficial uses for this technology in mind. Let me ask though, what have you been doing lately to improve the world?