I don't feel the expectation of indie devs to build games for the Ouya with ~$100000 budget seems weird. It makes more sense for the budget of a bigger PC title being ported to android, but not for something being launched on Android micro-console with an audience of about ~100,000 people tops first for a 6-month exclusivity period. It just feels like it is a way to kill a dev's first project.

This is meant as total constructive criticism, but I just read that article twice and have no idea what it was about. The formatting and picture placement through me way off and the quotes should be totally separate from Patrick's writing. Again, I'm not trying to sound mean, I just want to know what this article is about :(

Ouya's handling of this whole situation has been bizarre. There must be more to it.

My only question is, are the developers themselves in league with Ouya or are they acting on their own?

@robopengy: The article is about Ouya's response to the Free the Games(™?) criticism and how it upset everyone.

ouya is like the perfect honeypot for crappy indie java devs. Hopefully it sticks around a while longer and keeps that firehose of pressurized shit from splashing all over Vita, new consoles, and the PC.

Really interesting read, thanks Patrick

The OUYA has always been dodgy.

Even during its original Kickstarter with its master list of games you could suggest or wish to see on the console (it included Battletoads), the useless fan, the dev kit shipping with a defunct controller, firmware updates that messes up dev code, horrible coding practices that a few devs fixed for them, MSN paint line graphs, the SXSW interview debacle, Credit Card information that accepted any number, CC requirements on boot practices, controllers falling apart in-transit, scummy shipping practices for out of country backers, backers not receiving their OUYAs well after it's released in stores, OUYA getting backer's orders wrong, E3; I mean the list goes on.

If you have been following the OUYA, the latest events unfolding are just a drop in the bucket.

The inside of an iPad is like 100X better than a Ouya.. couple shitty hardware with shitty software you have an Ouya

Why in the hell did anyone ever believe that a 100$ kickstared console running on Android with a shitty looking controller was going to be a success and worth buying into? Some people need to get their heads out of their asses...

The Ouya was such a sorry ass system from the get go.

I love my ouya ;-;

I bought it for 40$ on ebay.

Ouuunooo :(

"Bithell was not alone."

You sonofagun.

Yeah, now that is definitely a valid criticism, the tone of everything seems like people were mad like Ouya is doing something dirty not just something potentially stupid for them. But why would any company just flat out acknowledge that though, "Yeah, we made a terrible business mistake and potentially lost 250K on a game nobody wants. We are terrible at this" lol, tha'ts not going to happen

We were being facetious. Well, I was anyway. For the record, most of my posts are.

While I think the way that they Ouya team has been handling things seems a bit out of touch, the backlash from developers makes me less enthralled to give their games any more merit than the rest of the library out there. It sounds like a bunch of children trying to sound big by yelling at the wall like everyone else.

Has anyone from a major gaming site covered all the problems that backers had in getting their OUYAs?

Mine came very late as did many others, but some people still haven't gotten one. There were a lot of what seemed like lies about shipping and such, people getting the wrong version or not all their controllers, and on and on, terrible service when trying to resolve issues. Lots of problems.

@hyst: There were even people who got it weeks after retail and the boxes seemed like they were thrown into the ocean... Then people had to wait weeks to get a response from Ouya.

Example: http://imgur.com/a/AzvIX

You can "take back" money on Kickstarter? That seems like an incredibly flawed system to begin with. Even so, I don't understand why people are so upset with Ouya for a poorly thought-out promotion.

Haha, I didn't catch that at first.

Haha, I didn't catch that at first.

I meant "take back", as in the money I'm putting into my own project goes to me, and I can just put it back in my bank account and play with the Ouya matching funding. Minus amazon and kickstarter's cut. This is why the allegations that the devs were juicing the system to get free money out of Ouya exist.

Well with the hardware it has it had no chance from the get-go. The latest ARM processors are magnitudes faster as Tegra 3, and 3 months from now a new ARM derivate will be magnitudes faster as the Snapdragon 800 of today.

A Sony Experia Z Ultra or Z1 drive circles around Ouya and has access to the whole Google Play store, you can hook a BT controller to it and stream to the TV. Ofc the pricing is not comparable, but if you look at how people buy phones, with $99 + 2 year contract, pretty much everyone has a more powerful smartphone or tablet by now as the Ouya is and the capabilities are all the same if not better.

The competition in the smartphone and tablet market is just killing them, if we can even say competition, cause really the margins of the Ouya were pretty sad from the get-go. It's a cheap media player, and that's really all it will end up being.

Uh, Ouya. At least the Wii U has some cool games coming for it. And Nintendo isn't going to abort it before Ouya is completely forgotten. Which will probably be in about 3 months.

@flappy: Yeah...I admit the Ouya could have had potential, more so as an option for streaming content and XBMC stuff but as a game console it always looked laughable; it was one of those things that hardcore android fanboys hoped they could tout.

I already have Steam.... What good is an Ouya anyway?

Um.. Sony? ;p

Considering how badly the Ouya's been doing no developer in their right mind would doom their game by making it exclusive to the Ouya. A little extra funding for 6 months exclusivity might seem like a good deal though, If you're desperate. (and cant get anything out of Microsoft or Sony)

but doesn't anyone remember the simpsons hit n run? rofl

OuNO

Here is the thing I don't understand. Anyone with the time and talent to develop a good game is going to want a market with a bigger install base than the OUYA. And if that game is being developed to work on Android, then the most sensible target is going to be the Google Play store. After all, if one of your most basic reward tiers meant to attact people to donate to a Kickstarter project is to give people a copy of the game to play, the last thing you want to do is constrain yourself to the smallest of the available donor populations. That means the only people who are going to be willing to be exclusive to OUYA are people who can only churn out shovelware on no budget or a limited budget. There is no incentive for actual talent, because OUYA does not cater to or even seem to recognize anything which might demonstrate any degree of quality or care. Gridiron is particularly amazing to me because you have a company making a game which requires a proprietary license they don't own, that is not even being written by the company who launched the Kickstarter (they contracted it out to a third party -- which I believe is against the Kickstarter TOS) and whose backers have already been dissected in extraordinary detail by numerous online sources. Yet this is the type of project that gets the spotlight. It sends one message, loud and clear, and that message is "Why bother!"

I do hope they can take these comments seriously and use them for a good hard self searching over the issues of the OUYA and related comments and why they are so damning. After all this article is noting(but not siding on) the fact that they didn't take the criticism head on but instead commented on the reaction as a whole and their opinions on that. If they see what they've caused and make the conscious decision to change how they react to this kind of feedback, they'll at least gain a solid ground to start building on.

I do hope they can take these comments seriously and use them for a good hard self searching over the issues of the OUYA and related comments and why they are so damning. After all this article is noting(but not siding on) the fact that they didn't take the criticism head on but instead commented on the reaction as a whole and their opinions on that. If they see what they've caused and make the conscious decision to change how they react to this kind of feedback, they'll at least gain a solid ground to start building on.

This game company is going to give me money to make a game on their console... WHAT A BUNCH OF MONSTERS.

Yep. Nailed it. That's clearly what this is about.

I have seen more news on this Free the Games program, but haven't kept up with it. This article is the only one I actually read on this matter, so I'm sort of with you that I do not understand it.

At least, I can't say for sure. If I'm correct, it's not about Ouya spending money to support devs, but they set goals for devs to hit and those developers then start pouring money into their own Kickstarter (something which isn't in the spirit, or even allowed(?) by Kickstarter) to meet the goal Ouya set so they will pay up?

And then there is at least one case of a dev doing just that, putting money into their own product, and Ouya paid them anyway?

Is that how it is? Because yeah, that's pretty shady. But I'm not sure if that's the full story on this stuff, because the backlash seems pretty hard.

Patrick, as always, incredible reporting. Really feel like I got a sense of what's going on here and what the issue is with Ouya and the indie developers.

Really interesting read. I knew Ouya would struggle in the marketplace but I never thought it would be turning into such a cluster fuck. Really hope for the sake of devs still on the Ouya shop that Ouya can turn things round.

I just don't see how another console is better then any sort of PC. Linux, windows, Mac who cares indies are best served on the web or via steam and other services. Don't need a silly TV box.

I have no idea what's going on. What exactly did Ouya do wrong?

Making indie games on Kickstarter become 6-month timed exclusives to their console. I think.

Reading comprehension?????

Ouya is awarding money to successful kickstarter campaigns that give them exclusivity, BUT many of the winners are suspected or have been outright caught gaming the system by getting friends/family/investors to pump their kickstarters with cash. This recent post by Ouya has just rubbed salt in the wound by not addressing any of the concerns people have had for weeks.

This is why I didn't back the Ouya, and why I was shaking my head in disbelief that so many people were HERALDING this thing as a Sony/Microsoft killer: you're telling me that a Kickstarter that exploited internet elitists (who just so happen to think they're too clever to be exploited) with a lot of fancy anti-corporate buzzwords, but no ACTUAL substance, has trouble forming a cohesive PR message?? Or a cohesive vision for their system!? I'm positively SHOCKED!

I'd say I feel sorry for anyone that got suckered into backing the Ouya on Kickstarter based on the premise that it would turn the console market upside-down, but I don't feel sorry for those people at all.

@melodiousj said:

The Ouya came into fruition solely on its premise of being an indie-friendly console—more open, less tied to big-market gaming, and so on. It's literally the only reason people cared about it, and I totally understand the appeal in fact. Fast-forward some when Ouya has some extra money they're willing to part with to help indie devs make games for their system. OK, good. But whereas an intelligent company would seek out high profile game developers to make games for its console, Ouya came up with a half-baked plan that is, as it stands, going to reward the developers of a game whose only redeeming quality is that it might make people want to play NFL Blitz (and hey, Blitz is pretty fun). So that money that could be helping secure some solid titles to the Ouya, that could actually cement the console as something indie devs might want to consider developing for? Yeah, it's just gonna go to some bullshit company in San Fran who made a nearly-plagiaristic game nobody fucking wants to play.

But hey, mistakes get made. And Ouya is, after all, the console of the people, so surely when they make a press release in response to the debacle they'll readily admit that they goofed shit up, right? Wrong! Where they could show a fucking spine and admit that Gridiron Whateverthefuckitscalled looks like a piece of shit (no, seriously), instead their response is, "Heehee, we don't even GET why the response has been negative! If only you guys would stop being such downers, the Ouya would be a gaming utopia! These games are so good!"

NO. FUCK YOU. If you want your console to be taken seriously, if you want good games on your console, you fund them. If you fuck up so spectacularly that you're giving the team behind what looks like a $1 iOS game one of those games you'd download for free to prove that your DS Flash Cart can, like, totally be used for legit purposes a quarter million dollars and the legitimate devs who are making games people want to play are getting nothing, and then you have the audacity to defend this, it's no wonder indie devs are going to be pissed off.

In short: Someone abused Ouya's crappy promotion, so a crap game is going to get a monetary reward that could go to honest devs making good games. Honest devs aren't happy with this, begin to wonder why they're even developing for this platform. Ouya has a chance to make amends. Ouya says "why you all gotta be so negative? Ouya is best! :(" Honest devs see this as fatal blow to the supposed integrity of the console, especially as corporate consoles are becoming friendlier to indies. Ouya fucks itself to where all those E.T. 2600 carts are buried.

Agreed! The Ouya was a great idea but the folks running the company dont have a clue, ive already had to resort to side loading games ive bought on my phone just to have something good to play. Had Sony not gone after all the indies this would probaby have had a valid place but now...its fast becoming by netflix/emulator box.

Moar like Ouyamightwannathinkaboutitfirst

What? The Ouya people are tone deaf to actual games issues and seem totally oblivious to what actually works and makes sense?

Weird. Wouldn't have expected that from such a bangin' device.

Does "Free The Games" qualify for its own concept page?

Looks a lot like harakiri by Ouya PR and marketing as they try to dance around the issue. It seems pretty suicidal plan to ignore the outcry of the content creators when there are legitimate issues they point out. They push away people with really good track records and they probably are going to end up with ones that just want easy money instead of creating great content.

More importantly, indie games are usually not what you'd call "high spec." There's no reason you couldn't do a $100-$500 mini-PC and put that under your TV via HDMI.

I am not a Ouya hater. I am happy to root for new ideas. This one just never made a great deal of sense to me and I did not understand all of the support for a system that played phone games and was super hacker friendly. I believe this may be more of an example of people's imagination that good game development is easy and that a bunch of hacking would some how create a wonderful experience. Not to mention where's the market with so much competition? Sorry, didn't make sense, still doesn't. Would love to see it find it's stride and show some real value, but I just don't see it yet.