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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think what he means is that ouya doesn't enforce the confirmation checks, but the developer can choose to use the confirmation checks if they wish (and usually it's a good idea so you aren't making the player feel like they accidentally bought it)

[deathtotheweird]

http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/tech/2013/04/why-are-people-reviewing-the-ouya-much-less-giving-it-poor-scores/

Ouya is shipping hardware to Kickstarter backers in hopes to get constructive feedback ahead of the console’s retail launch a full two months away.

Oh. I was under the impression that the backer version was the final product? As opposed to the developer edition they sent out a few months ago, that is.

Even still, if this is true, it seems unfair that backers get a shitty beta version of the Ouya and people that waited get a better one. Oh well, suckers.

[Blademasterbobo]

it's always been funny to me that independent devs often make people pay them (sometimes more than the normal price) to do qa work for them. why wouldn't it be different for hardware lol

people are dum

[VDZ]

http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/tech/2013/04/why-are-people-reviewing-the-ouya-much-less-giving-it-poor-scores/

Ouya is shipping hardware to Kickstarter backers in hopes to get constructive feedback ahead of the console’s retail launch a full two months away.

Oh. I was under the impression that the backer version was the final product? As opposed to the developer edition they sent out a few months ago, that is.

Even still, if this is true, it seems unfair that backers get a shitty beta version of the Ouya and people that waited get a better one. Oh well, suckers.

He's incorrect about the hardware - the hardware is finalized, or at least that's what we were promised. The software on the other hand, they've been repeatedly saying for ages (perhaps even since the original kickstarter?) that the software will not be fully done yet when kickstarter units are sent out, and they'll have it fixed by the actual launch.

On the one hand, the 'lol they're sending out beta products' crowd has a point as backers did pay for their Ouya. On the other hand, the hardware is finalized, so as a backer I want to receive my Ouya now ASAP. I don't really care how finished the software is yet; that stuff can always be updated later. I don't want to wait for two months just so they can fix some things they can also fix after sending me my Ouya. Most Kickstarter projects get delayed to hell and back; I'm glad Ouya didn't, even if it does mean I have to spend two months with an Ouya with unfinished software (as opposed to no Ouya for those months at all in case of a delay).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

is the controller lag issue really something that they can fix with software, though? it sounds more like a hardware thing

[deathtotheweird]

Hm yeah, not only that but the apparent poorly constructed controller is cause for concern as well.

Seems like most people only casually interested should wait until Ouya 2 comes out and get that one. Or wait until people put their Ouya1 on eBay for 20 bucks.

[VDZ]

I read the linked thread for a bit.

Obviously that is a test game. Or is there really a game that goes for $900?

That seems like a game design challenge.

According to the poster it was taken several weeks before the kickstarter units were sent out.

Here's an Ouya dev showing there is a built-in confirmation prompt:
http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?1993-Concerns-that-devs-can-maliciously-charge-users&p=15838&viewfull=1#post15838

Now I don't know what to believe. If this is the case, then what's going on in that review?

hmm, in the review he says that often there are no confirmation checks. so I'm confused as to what purchases do not have confirmation checks. or if he's making shit up, or there's some kind of lag/delay or bug where the confirmation isn't being shown.

i think what he means is that ouya doesn't enforce the confirmation checks, but the developer can choose to use the confirmation checks if they wish (and usually it's a good idea so you aren't making the player feel like they accidentally bought it)

Either he's completely making shit up, he's just taking stuff he heard on the internet, or somehow there's a bizarre firmware bug exactly in the current version that would somehow auto-confirm the displayed dialogs (very unlikely). The thread makes very clear that this isn't the case:

When your game wants to make a purchase, it makes the one function call to a firmware API, passing in an encryption key specific to that game. That API immediately suspends your game and does everything related to making the purchase, including displaying a price, the product name, and asking the player if they want to make the purchase, and talking to the OUYA merchandise servers which do the actual transaction. At some point your game is unsuspended and passed the results of the purchase - it tells you if the purchase was successful, if it failed and why, or if the game had already been purchased so the player wasn't charged. It also passes back an encrypted receipt so that you can verify that the purchase was made using the official OUYA server.

The SDK is merely an interface that makes calls deeper into the firmware. So of course there won't be any window open commands or anything like that.

The developer CANNOT silently make a purchase. That confirmation window pops up as a result of the call into the OUYA framework that sits on the firmware.. NOT the SDK.

The only place this concern holds water is if a developer decides to give you mis-information based on the result. Such as ""your purchase was not successful" when it really was. In my opinion, any text within the game itself telling the user a purchase failed or succeeded should not be allowed for this reason, and the firmware pop-ups should be the only way to know about anything purchase related.

Just so people are *really* sure, I went in and looked at what the private ODK library is actually doing when you call OuyaFacade.RequestPurchase - it's calling a service running in the OUYA framework. That's what handles everything to do with the actual purchase.

The confirmation is firmware stuff that cannot be messed with by the application in any way. The user always has to confirm purchases.

[Mantorok]

This thread makes it sound like the controller lag issue can be solved:
http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/488/controller-lag-and-inaccuracy

[Christian Knudsen]

Either he's completely making shit up, he's just taking stuff he heard on the internet, or somehow there's a bizarre firmware bug exactly in the current version that would somehow auto-confirm the displayed dialogs (very unlikely).

It seems that the Verge reviewer ran into a bug where if you ran a game that had the 'test' flag turned on, then until you restarted the Ouya console, the confirm purchase window (in all games) would be red. But the text telling you the price of the game is also red, so it wouldn't show up. So he just worded it very poorly in his review -- he was getting the confirmation window, but no pricing info.

[s_l_m]

Some GL bench scores. Not bad but not amazing either for the 2.1 but the 2.5 is pretty weak. Maybe ouya has issues with big textures?
http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?D=OUYA%20Console

[Udderdude]

This thread makes it sound like the controller lag issue can be solved:
http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/488/controller-lag-and-inaccuracy

Not that I wouldn't be glad if it was fixed in some way, but having to do all that shit just to get non-laggy controller input?  It's obvious they used a language and OS that's not suited for game development. 

[Ouren]

Hm yeah, not only that but the apparent poorly constructed controller is cause for concern as well.

Seems like most people only casually interested should wait until Ouya 2 comes out and get that one. Or wait until people put their Ouya1 on eBay for 20 bucks.

I'll buy a Pokemon cube for $20.

[JScythe]

Most of the reviews that I've read so far stated that some games are worse than others in regards to input lag. Some games seem have no lag at all, while other games lag to holy hell. This strongly suggests that the problem is a software problem and not a hardware problem.

The lag on a tablet of phone can be minimized. The screen on a cell phone / table is an integral part of the overall device design. The Ouya doesn't have that luxury and has to work with the lag imposed by the TV. It may be the case that some games need to be run in lower resolutions and then "scaled up" to the TVs native resolution in order to get the right feel in regards to lag. But I'm not sure how that can handled by the Ouya firmware. Maybe if they put a hard cap on game resolution, but that would also mean that a lot of launch games would have to be kicked back to developers for revision.

In other news, every Ouya is also a Steambox. Behold!





Now you really can play Crysis 3 on the Ouya. . . sort of. . .

[nikki]

sure you can; if you buy a nice machine called a computer to do the actual work on the side.
while a steambox would be an actual computer.

[Christian Knudsen]

In other news, every Ouya is also a Steambox. Behold!





Now you really can play Crysis 3 on the Ouya. . . sort of. . .

The Ouya sure is excellent at being an unnecessary extra device between your computer and TV!

[JScythe]

The Ouya sure is excellent at being an unnecessary extra device between your computer and TV!

Just like NVIDIA Project Shield. And the actual Steambox as described by Gabe Newell.

while a steambox would be an actual computer.

Nope. The way that's the Steambox has been described is more like a thin client that hooks up to your TV. That would explain why it runs Linux and why most of the games available on the Linux Steam client are casual or indie games. Yes, you can play Killing Floor and Serious Sam 3 on Linux, but I'm betting that they won't be available on the Steambox unless you stream them from your high end PC.

[nikki]

mm well kotako, techradar and the verge have other info

[TomHunt]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/06/what-games-are-the-reviewers-are-wrong-about-ouya

[Ouren]

Scrolled to the part where he calls the Wii-U and Vita failures, checked out.  

[JScythe]

mm well kotako, techradar and the verge have other info

Not to derail the thread or anything, but the actual reports coming out of Valve are very sketchy and sometimes contradictory. What I find interesting here this little nugget from the Kotaku article you posted.

The Steam Box—code-named "Bigfoot" at Valve—won't just be a PC. It'll be a server, too, with the near future enabling you to "have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it". The LAN party just made a comeback. Only without all the cables.

I'm all for the inclusion of multi-seat gaming, but if you look at current multi-seat computing setups you'll see that they all use thin clients hooked up to a central PC. I can't find it right now, but there is a BBC interview were Mr. Newell talks about the Steambox as a streaming device and sets the price point at around $99.

I don't think that Valve is really looking to take on the PS4 and Xbox Durango. Instead, I think that he's shooting to cut the legs out from under AppleTV and the upcoming Xbox Stingray.http://www.examiner.com/article/report-new-xbox-360-model-code-named-stingray-will-cost-only-99

While it's certainly possible to build a $400 dollar PC, the resulting rig is usually crap and certainly not powerful enough to host multiple game streams simultaneously. At the $99 price point, Valve might be able to get away with a machine that will run Killing floor and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on hardware, but not anything too graphically taxing. And lets not forget that you can't launch Netflix or Youtube from Big Picture mode. Call me spoiled or entitled or wot not, but if the machine is going to be in my living room then I'd really like to be able to use it for ALL of my living room / HDTV things. Your mileage may vary.

Scrolled to the part where he calls the Wii-U and Vita failures, checked out.

Speaking of derailing the thread. . . .

On the one hand, that's kind of like calling the sky blue. On the other hand, neither console has been discontinued yet. Call no man happy that is not dead. Until we've seen these two machines through to their final moments, we really can't say how successful or unsuccessful they are.

They PSP had almost no support for the first several years of it's cycle. It wasn't until the last two or three years ago that it started to get some decent games at a decent pace. I really think that Sony should have stuck with the PSP for a few more years until they could release the Vita at a lower price point, but it is what it is. The handheld market is owned by Android devices right now anyway.

As for the Wii U? It could still be a thing if Big N plays it's cards right. The remote play feature is attractive, but not enough to move units. Maybe if it supported more than one tablet controller in remote play mode (multi-seat functionality again) it could really take off. Time will tell.