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The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

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Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#71

Post by JoshTriplett »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #41
billyhoffman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This. Ouya + XMBC is amazing. While modern $99 "video pucks" like AppleTV, Roku, or Amazon are good streaming clients for NetFlix, etc, they utterly suck at playing files from a local network. Ouya + XMBC is an incredibly option for this use case, now that Boxee is gone.

I've been having a lot of success with the Chromecast lately. The more I think about it, the less I want an intelligent TV or yet another device (which needs updates and config) and controller (which needs its batteries replaced and fished out of the couch cushions) attached to it. A dumb receiver like the Chromecast seems to be the superior solution. I have no shortage of smart devices, I don't need another. I just…

Agreed. I don't want a smart TV or a media-player box, I want a smartphone/tablet/PC and the ability to easily get its content onto a TV.

And if you're inclined to tinker, the Chromecast is a ton of fun: it's actually running a full browser engine, and you can send it a page to view. That page can then use things like WebRTC streaming.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#72

Post by thomaslangston »

Xylakant wrote: post #28
nkozyra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone would argue the PS3 is the perfect party console, either. I bought the PS3 and Wii around the same time and obviously the "party console" prize went to the latter - particularly early on it seemed like every third time I put a game in there was 15 minutes of firmware and software updates.

It's not like the Wii never needed any firmware updates either.

I seem to remember that it downloaded (and maybe installed) some of these while the box was in standby mode, so rarely did I have to install one while waiting to play.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#73

Post by sp332 »

kevingadd wrote: post #70
sp332 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note, every game in the Ouya store has a free trial or some kind of free mode. You can download every game & start playing it right away, then choose to pay to unlock the rest of it later. Of course some games are completely free, but they're generally not very polished.

This may have been true at launch, but it is false now: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/213775/Ouya_ditching_prob... Just another ill-fated and ill-considered promise from the Ouya staffers. Unfortunate; I liked it on principle.

Oh :( I didn't think it was that ill-considered. Since the rest of the platform was designed to be very developer-friendly, it was nice to have a few pieces that were friendly to players.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#74

Post by muyuu »

ebbv wrote: post #8

> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone. This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead. Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the…

Then they mash the buttons away and win almost half of the time.

He's right, these games are meant to be played by people with about the same experience, or at least a decent amount of experience and then a bit of handicap.

They're not exactly Mario Party.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#75

Post by kevingadd »

sp332 wrote: post #73
kevingadd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may have been true at launch, but it is false now: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/213775/Ouya_ditching_prob... Just another ill-fated and ill-considered promise from the Ouya staffers. Unfortunate; I liked it on principle.

Oh :( I didn't think it was that ill-considered. Since the rest of the platform was designed to be very developer-friendly, it was nice to have a few pieces that were friendly to players.

The core problem is that it appears player-friendly, but in practice it is not, because it wounds developers. If you're an indie with limited resources, being forced to build a demo means you end up having to ship a bad demo (actually reducing your sales in many cases) or not ship on the platform at all.

In an ideal world, 'all games have free trials' is good. The realities of game development mean that even for games where it's possible to build an excellent trial, it may not happen. Budget cuts happen, resources you thought you had go away, your schedule slips or deadlines draw closer - in those scenarios, it would be unreasonable to make the core game suffer in order to have a demo ready by the deadline. Most developers would instead focus on the most important part - the core game, the thing people are paying for.

There are also games for which it is near-impossible to build a free trial. A recent example is The Stanley Parable; the nature of the experience made it impossible to have a 'free trial' version of the game, so they had to instead build an entirely separate game that they then gave away for free, and tried to use to convince people to buy the actual game.

That solution worked great for them, but it took time and resources. I wouldn't be able to bring myself to tell every developer they had to do that just to be on my store.

Note that demos and trials are great when they work: They help convert slight interest into sales. However, many successful games sell entirely on the strength of good reviews, word of mouth, and press coverage. This is part of why sometimes the wisest choice is not to have a demo.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#76

Post by jonny_eh »

kevingadd wrote: post #70
sp332 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note, every game in the Ouya store has a free trial or some kind of free mode. You can download every game & start playing it right away, then choose to pay to unlock the rest of it later. Of course some games are completely free, but they're generally not very polished.

This may have been true at launch, but it is false now: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/213775/Ouya_ditching_prob... Just another ill-fated and ill-considered promise from the Ouya staffers. Unfortunate; I liked it on principle.

OUYA engineer here (not PR).

Developers kept telling us that requiring a free component was discouraging them from publishing.

Since we changed our stance on that issue we've received a large influx of new and awesome games. So while it might not seem ideal from a gamer's perspective at first, the availability of a lot more games is pretty nice.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#77

Post by jonny_eh »

sp332 wrote: post #58
reidmain wrote: post #25

Towerfall is also on the PS4.

And the version on PS4, "Ascension", is better than the version available for Ouya right now. They say the Ouya version will eventually get the extra features. http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/16/5108514/is-towerfalls-move...

Yup, in June.

In the meantime, I recommend Duck Game. A new 4-player 2D combat game that just launched exclusively on ouya: https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#78

Post by jonny_eh »

sehugg wrote: post #57

These are all fun games, but the Ouya's problem is that these are all the same games the author would have been playing a year ago.

That's mostly the fault of the author and our marketing budget. We've been getting a steady stream of awesome new games including Duck Game, which I'm sure would have been a hit at this guy's party: https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#79

Post by baldfat »

gonehome wrote: post #45
billyhoffman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This. Ouya + XMBC is amazing. While modern $99 "video pucks" like AppleTV, Roku, or Amazon are good streaming clients for NetFlix, etc, they utterly suck at playing files from a local network. Ouya + XMBC is an incredibly option for this use case, now that Boxee is gone.

Roku paired with Plex works extremely well (thanks to Plex). Plex reminds me of VLC in how well it does exactly what I want it to do. I'm a fan. https://plex.tv/

Chromecast works with Plex

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#80

Post by awj »

rexf wrote: post #64
baby wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge problem with new consoles I find. I don't remember having to update my N64 every time I wanted to play it. But my PS3? Every time I want to play I have to spend like 30 minutes in downloading and installing an update. Every single time. I don't play that often but still do play from times to times and I haven't had a clean launch for years.

I have the same problem with my gaming PC. When I boot it up, I have numerous updates for Windows, Steam, games, etc.

Sure, but that's been true of PCs for ages. We're all used to the idea that PCs need to be updated. To me one of the advantages to consoles was that they could pick up and play at any moment.
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