Ouya Android game console gets VC-funded, torn down

Ouya Android game console gets VC-funded, torn down
linuxgizmos.com

If i was to try again sometime in the future, id certainly do it like this.

1. Build a good prototype and evaluate if the product works and if there is demand on a really small scale

2. Try to raise money through crowdfounding.

3. If it works, you have proven to everybody (including yourself and potential later investors) that there indeed is a market for your product(s). You dont have to step in front of investors and try to sell an unproven idea. Try to make a hit product and get VCs on board after this stage (if you need to)

4. If it doesnt you can quit or try it out on your own in bootstrapped fashion.

Never ever again would i take outside money for equity in a very early stage, but this is just my personal view and the lesson i learned in the last years.

This approach can work great for games/products, it wont really for your next social web startup/app project mind you. In that case i would go the bootstrapped route directly and try to prove my product before going for the stars.

A tiny fan like that reminds of the one inside my PS2 Slim, which is loud enough that when I have the inclination to game on it again I'll seriously consider doing a hardware mod to replace it (with a non-stock fan -- just to be safe). I have to wonder by how much this defect (which is apparently not very common with the model) has made me play my PS2 Slim less over the time I have owned it. If the Ouya itself is not sold at a profit this may be a problem. I'm not a hardware professional, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd be wary of including a small fan in a consumer product if it were at all possible to avoid it.

There is no official info on the technical cause (some people say wrong type of solder that would get too hot and develop hairline cracks, some say the graphics chip dissipated more heat than expected, etc) but it was definitely related to heat.

People often put these devices inside mildly enclosed spaces (media cabinets, etc) with poor natural airflow, etc.

This tends to work okay if you have active cooling (since it's not totally enclosed), but gets amazingly hot otherwise.

This is not normally how tablets are used, and maybe after testing it (or thinking about it) they realized the safest bet was active cooling?

Finally, there needs to be some profit made, so this is slapped together as cheaply as possible. Bleh.