KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Remember the Ouya? It was another of the Kickstarter success stories that hasn't turned out quite as well as was hoped. While initially it seemed like a great way to mix up the console space and challenge some of the big boys at their own game, ultimately the little Android home console ended up having little appeal as people focused their casual gaming on smartphones and tablets. With that in mind, it's not too hard to believe the rumours that the company is now courting offers from potential buyers in America and China, to sell the firm off in its entirety.
Recode's sources believe that there haven't been any concrete offers as of yet, but that there's been some interest from Google, Amazon and Tencent, the latter of which is perhaps the most interesting since there isn't much console competition in China. However it did recently lift it's ban on consoles, so that may not last for much longer.
Unfortunately other than a relatively well rounded console platform, Ouya doesn't have a lot to offer a major buyer. While it made a big splash with an $8 million Kickstarter back in 2012, it quickly ran into problems with delays and it eventually found itself with quite a small library of games. Today it has over 900, but that hasn't helped much. It tried to innovate in several ways, like forcing game makers to provide demos, but that was eventually dropped when all it seemed to do was discourage developers from porting their titles over.
More recently the console maker has tried a few different strategies, like offering a subscription model for games, but when your main business is game sales and your top selling title of the year only shifts 7,000 copies, you're in trouble.
KitGuru Says: Poor Ouya. It had so much promise – or seemed to – when first announced. What do you guys think the best future for it would be?
Obviously the mobile platform dominated the Ouya’s Android-based game system, so now that the obvious weakness is shown, the obvious answer is this: Make the Ouya a hybrid mobile/home system somewhat like the WiiU, except better.
Imagine this: An Ouya you can take anywhere with a suite of power and video adapters to suit every need. Charge it at home,or in the car. Play it on the big screen, a pc monitor, or on its own built-in display. A micro-controller or built-in controls for mobile gaming sessions,or the same well-known controller on the current Ouya for the classic appeal. With the proper use of adapters, they could make it relatively portable.
So, it’d be portable, powerful, and competitive enough to make itself a valuable addition to any gamer’s catalog.
I have an Ouya and i mainly use it as a small media center.
Looking at the build of the Ouya they really went on the cheap side. Bad soldering, loose ports. They could have made it better for the 69$ or 99$ w/e price tag.
Right now i created a new case for it out of wood and soldered a USB hub on it giving me 4 extra USB ports power feeded from the small board of the Ouya and one internal used port for a 16 GB USB drive. I then mounted it on an empty external drive case so it has a 1TB storage and added samba to it so i can add stuff fast from my windows.
Then sideloaded some apps like Xbmx & Plex for media purpose and side loaded some codecs cause they were to lazy to request licensing.
Now it does a pretty good deal as a small media center and if i wanna take it away i can dismount the hard drive allowing me to carry up to 20GB of storage on movies.
If only like Andrew said allowed more connections like PC or small screen addon then it would have been a good on the road type of box.
It as a massive fail due to
: using a extremely low powered ARM chip
: using Fail Droid as the OS
This should have at lest had a Atom dual or quad core cpu and a very slim down version of windows (like win 7 starts edition or something + CCCP FTW) This would then have been able to steam or play 1080p movies directly on the pc with out lag.
Or maybe Linux. Windows, unfortunately, is overpriced.
15$ for windows Starters is cheap. (and in reality that’s all this console needed)
Windows With Bing is going to be free fyi
fyi Lin-sucx just sucks… btw what do u think fail-droid is.. it’s googles LIN-SUXS os… they already tried that and it failed hard core for them.
I’m pretty sure the Steambox uses Linux though
depending on the OEM , the Valve Steam Box will have SteamOS but I going to bet my entire life that it won’t take off the ground… Im willing to bet 95% of all SteamBox buyers that get a box with SteamOS will format and dump windows 7/8 on it right away.
I know for a fact thats what Im going to do as well
Question !
Remmber the very first EEE PC that sparked the netbook crazy… ya I didn’t think soo they were all linux driven at the start but they failed hardcore and basically every person that bought one was looking for a way to install windows xp on them… It got soo bad for Asus that they even had to bundle instructions on how to format and install windows XP on there 2/4/8 Gig models (btw I still have a original 2 gig model)