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[Superb Joe]

Half-Life 3 doesn't exist either, and people don't shut the fuck up about that either. What's your point?

that one thread got more words than another because of a computer shaped like star wars

[inkBot]

I'm guessing you don't have anything intelligent to say then.

/ignore

[Richard Kain]

yeah i don't mean the technology is fantastical science fiction, i mean it doesn't exist and nerds can't stop talking about it

For the Ouya, the company already has a functioning prototype. They are already getting production quotes from chip manufacturers. I think it a bit unfair to imply that this is nothing but a pipe dream, when a physical example already exists. And it certainly isn't kind to compare it to a laser defense initiative that never materialized.

In the case of the Ouya, the company did everything you would expect, but then simply couldn't find someone to fund mass production. Even with an actual system, you have to have the money necessary to send it to the assembly line. And now they are going to get that money.

[Superb Joe]

yeah i don't mean the technology is fantastical science fiction, i mean it doesn't exist and nerds can't stop talking about it

For the Ouya, the company already has a functioning prototype. They are already getting production quotes from chip manufacturers. I think it a bit unfair to imply that this is nothing but a pipe dream, when a physical example already exists. And it certainly isn't kind to compare it to a laser defense initiative that never materialized.

In the case of the Ouya, the company did everything you would expect, but then simply couldn't find someone to fund mass production. Even with an actual system, you have to have the money necessary to send it to the assembly line. And now they are going to get that money.

i mean star wars the movie. also they have a video of somebody maybe not really playing with a ui prototype, this is a far cry (that's a video game title by the way) from filling your bill of materials for less than 100 dollars and including all the toolings for your console case and controller and the cost of software development and electrical testing and warranties and sales and the microsoft android license and infrastructure and shipping and doing it in 8 months.

they need significant outside investment, and maybe they will find it after the kickstarter thing if they get a large amount of backers. but this thing will still not exist in 8 months.

[SolarLune]

I see what you mean with that. The list of things they need to do to produce the product is low - perhaps too low. Maybe they don't have to get any licenses or testing since the specs are final (maybe they've gotten that awhile ago) and maybe they have the networking infrastructure finished already, though maybe it's a mock-up. It sounds like it's not that much time, but these are professionals, both in creating hardware and dealing with hardware manufacturers and other companies. Only time will tell, honestly.

[Oddball]

This reminds me of that Phantom console. The prototype of that was even demoed at E3, but in the end breaking into the console market takes more than connecting together some fancy tech. I think Kickstarter needs a high profile failure to put the service back into perspective, and this is starting to fit the bill.

[Richard Kain]

i mean star wars the movie.

Oh, I'm sorry. For a moment there I thought you were making a clever and insightful comparison to a failed defense initiative that the U.S. government threw a lot of funding at with no real results to show for it. But instead you were making a childish reference to a work of popular science fantasy. How disappointing.  

and the microsoft android license

I believe you mean the "Google" android license. They would need a license from Microsoft if they planned on putting Windows mobile or Windows 8 on it.

they need significant outside investment, and maybe they will find it after the kickstarter thing if they get a large amount of backers. but this thing will still not exist in 8 months.

They would need significant outside investment for mass production and shipping to stores worldwide. For an initial production run and distribution to cover their current pre-orders, the money from the kickstarter campaign will be more than enough. Everything has to start somewhere, and a good first step would be finalizing the technical specs, and shipping the initial production run to potential developers.

[inkBot]

I also got Phantom vibes from this, before I watched the Kickstarter video and read the project description. The important distinction between Ouya and Phantom is that the claims they make for the Ouya are far more sensible than the claims made for the Phantom.

[Oddball]

If I'm remembering correctly the Phantom didn't make that loftier of promises. It was just a high-end PC with a digital distribution service. It could even play exist windows games out of the box.

[Richard Kain]

If I'm remembering correctly the Phantom didn't make that loftier of promises. It was just a high-end PC with a digital distribution service. It could even play exist windows games out of the box.

And those promises AREN'T loftier? With the Ouya, they are talking about taking the innards of a tablet device, sticking them in a box, putting an HDMI port in the back, and shipping it. The point isn't the power or the competition. It is to provide a group of interested users with an open-source alternative to existing consoles.

[Superb Joe]

i mean star wars the movie.

Oh, I'm sorry. For a moment there I thought you were making a clever and insightful comparison to a failed defense initiative that the U.S. government threw a lot of funding at with no real results to show for it. But instead you were making a childish reference to a work of popular science fantasy. How disappointing.  

and the microsoft android license

I believe you mean the "Google" android license. They would need a license from Microsoft if they planned on putting Windows mobile or Windows 8 on it.

they need significant outside investment, and maybe they will find it after the kickstarter thing if they get a large amount of backers. but this thing will still not exist in 8 months.

They would need significant outside investment for mass production and shipping to stores worldwide. For an initial production run and distribution to cover their current pre-orders, the money from the kickstarter campaign will be more than enough. Everything has to start somewhere, and a good first step would be finalizing the technical specs, and shipping the initial production run to potential developers.

1. do i have to explain the ways of i, super joe, the hero of the fsa, to you, whoever you are? the unspoken basis of this joke is that star wars, the legendary franchise about spacefaring gay robots created by a bearded mouse man in the 70s, is not a geometric shape. you can not describe star wars, in its entirety, by way of dimensions. thus, a window into the absurd has been cracked open, and you, the reader, have snaked your head into it to see abstract thought's unsexy mother undress. imagine a world where we never have to be john romero's bitch? that's what's on offer here.

2. actually microsoft have claims to a number of patents that android infringes on, and they aggressively pursue companies manufacturing android devices to sign a license agreement. something like 70% of android device manufacturers pay microsoft royalties. the startup begging for money on kickstarter who are too scared to show off their photoshop d-pad mockup because they don't have a patent lawyer on retainer yet probably aren't going to win that one.

3. if that's their plan then they're going to absolutely eat shit on all of the custom parts needed for their controller. you can't make a small production run bespoke system for cheap. see the pandora and whatever else.

4. the phantom had plastic bread.

[J-Snake]

From an aesthetic and optimisation point of view I like fixed-hardware. But if a low spec pc-game runs well on a weak pc, it will run well on a better one aswell.

Utter and complete nonsense. As both hardware and software change, more and more older games become incompatible with current PCs. There are many older games requiring you to jump through various hoops to get the game not to crash at startup because assumptions were made at the time of creation that simply aren't true anymore. For games with strong fanbases there are sometimes compatibility patches made by the community, but generally this isn't the case. Just go ahead and download a bunch of win95 games, try to see how many of them still run on your quad core win7 PC. It gets better as you try games developed more recently than win95, but it simply shows that over time more and more games become incompatible. In ten years, we might not even have x86 support anymore, and all of our 32-bit games will require an emulator similar to our DOS games now.

 Put it into perspectve, hehe. You are talking about 15 year old games. What's the life span of a console? 6 years? DirectX 9 games should just run fine and will do in following years aswell. And how long has it been around now? Nearly 10 years already. If you want to be on a safe side then just follow the opengl standard. It will likely hold longer than a console-cicle. If you are developing for low specs you are not going to use fancy extensions, not available on every system. That's what I am talking about since ouya is a low-spec system. The same goes for xna. If it can run on my netbook (because I am not using high-def profile) it will run on every machine and so far I haven't experienced any contradictions.

Do you see my point?

[J-Snake]

What makes me really skeptical about its seriousness is what she says (and how she says it)
at 2:21

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh6Ji_6Wg9c&feature=related

[Oddball]

If I'm remembering correctly the Phantom didn't make that loftier of promises. It was just a high-end PC with a digital distribution service. It could even play exist windows games out of the box.

And those promises AREN'T loftier? With the Ouya, they are talking about taking the innards of a tablet device, sticking them in a box, putting an HDMI port in the back, and shipping it. The point isn't the power or the competition. It is to provide a group of interested users with an open-source alternative to existing consoles.

Still sounds the same to me. Take existing tech and slap a digital distribution service to it. The company making the Phantom was also an existing hardware company. I hope for the sake of all those backers that you are right and I'm just thinking the worst.

[eld]

If I'm remembering correctly the Phantom didn't make that loftier of promises. It was just a high-end PC with a digital distribution service. It could even play exist windows games out of the box.

And those promises AREN'T loftier? With the Ouya, they are talking about taking the innards of a tablet device, sticking them in a box, putting an HDMI port in the back, and shipping it. The point isn't the power or the competition. It is to provide a group of interested users with an open-source alternative to existing consoles.

Still sounds the same to me. Take existing tech and slap a digital distribution service to it. The company making the Phantom was also an existing hardware company. I hope for the sake of all those backers that you are right and I'm just thinking the worst.

The difference being now the Ouya team has the money, the phantom-project wasn't doing anything different from what laptop-producers have been doing for years, and there are more laptops out there than anyone can count.

They just never managed to gather the funding they needed.

Then again, there is this prophecy that has been passed down through generations about the one kickstarter project that'll show that kickstarter is a big fraud, everyone is constantly crossing their fingers everytime there is a new successful project.