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Originally Posted by Twistedsymphony
Not exactly... for all intents and purposes the kickstarter was just a pre-order program. the only difference is you were pre-ordering so far in advance that they had the money to actually start production.
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I forgot to point out that Kickstarter is NOT a pre-order program. The Person how gets the money does not legally have to give you anything. They are no bound in any way except morally.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Twistedsymphony
I think this is just a difference in ideals as to why someone should back kickstarter. IMO you can look at it two ways
1. you're making a DONATION to the project, you think they have a good idea and you want to GIVE them money to help them out.
2. you're making a very very early pre-order where you're exchanging goods for money just like you would at GameStop or Amazon.com when you pre-order something.
In the case of the Ouya kickstarter I gave them money for a console a few controllers and I received a console and a few controllers a year later. I'm completely fine with this situation. If they, or anyone else makes millions over their goal, then I say "Good for them". As long as everyone received the goods they were promised I honestly don't see any problem with it.
Well, like any console it only makes the news when something newsworthy happened. The only things newsworthy to happen since the retail launch are new games getting released and I'm seeing a steady stream of reviews and news about those games from Kotaku and other publications, which I consider typical of any console release.
As for the credit card and hacking I don't see the correlation. The fact that I entered my credit car wouldn't in any way shape or form prevent me from pirating on the Ouya. Honestly I think it's entirely based on the fact that they didn't write the actual purchase code into the console and instead offload that duty to the individual app developers. It was essentially lazyness on Ouya's part because it would have required more development to write an as-needed payment processing mechanism.
I didn't mention it in my review but the version of ShadowGun on the Ouya includes an expansion that actually doubles the length of the game. I do agree though that the game is more of a graphics tech demo than genuine competitor in the game space. Even still, you can't expect a $5 game on a shoestring budget to compete against a $60 game with a multi-million dollar budget.
One of the things that surprised me most about the Ouya is that there are quite a number of "long" games available, meaning stuff that caters to playing more than a few minutes at a time. There are at least a dozen good narrative driven games that you can sit and play for hours at a time.
The biggest issue is that none of them are "exclusive". Though the reason for that is mostly because the Dev kits only went out earlier this year, you can't expect the next Skyrim to get developed inside of a couple months, and if any games like that were already underdevelopment for Android, I can't imagine any dev team would be willing to put all their effort into a completely unproven platform.
It's a little different when 3rd parties makes launch titles like that for Sony or MS because even though it's a new console, it's got a history and proven sales record, something that the Ouya doesn't have yet. It will be a while until the console "proves itself" enough for titles like that to find their way to it. Until then it's, at best going primarily to receive ports from iOS, XLBA, PSN and indie PC releases... but I guess that's EXACTLY what I expected out of it from the start, a consolidated platform for small and indie devs to use that let me enjoy their games on my TV instead of squinting at my phone or hunched over a keyboard in my office.
I also don't understand the absolute vitriol that a lot of hardcore gamers are throwing at the device... yeah they screwed up the launch and there are a lot of things that still need work but you'd swear the way people are attacking it that the Ouya team was somehow responsible for genocide or child slave labor or something.
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I agree with almost everything you said (except the top part about it being a pre-order... not legally). It even states clearly that you are "giving" your money to them, not buying a product.
And the credit card thing, statics show the people with the card in place and ready to buy are more likely to buy items. But as far as hacking goes it might not deter anyone who was planning on it anyhow. I personally have no issues with the Ouya team... I bet they are trying as hard as they can and giving as much as they can.
The real thing I am concerned about is they way it got started (not the team or console for that matter), so basically my beef (if any) is with Kickstarter.
My opinion on the console is it will fade out... just what I think will happen. It will fade or find a niche audience.