Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Actually, the problem is that the market they are disrupting... doesn't exist. There's a mistaken idea in the public right now that Ouya can (or will) replace dedicated consoles. That's not even remotely true. The system simply does not have the power to be that device in your home.

Gamers seem to have backed this based on an idea that it's a $100 full fledged console. It is not. It is, at best, a tablet that hooks up to your tv and has a controller. At least as far as the hardware is concerned.

On top of that, their release timelines aren't even remotely realistic. March? They don't even have their online store prototyped yet. They have some UI mockups and that's it. Launching in March? Yeah right.

And then there's the issue with allowing the console to be fully open, using a hardware platform that is already having so many issues with piracy that developers are slowly being forced to release their games for free and supported with ads to make any money.

I have no doubt that if this system ever materializes, it will make an impact, but it's a long stretch to think you'll be taking delivery of this system in March and playing Final Fantasy 3 on it.

Some relevant quotes from the Ouya devs in Ben Kuchera's article[1]:

"That [controller] design is not final," I was told. "We are in a prototype phase and exploring several options."

"We know the hardware specifications, and are working with electrical and mechanical engineers to test the performance of the hardware. We have begun work on the user interface and software. We’ll pull all these pieces together and test how they fit, while we finalize the product."

It reminds me of that Kickstarter flashlight that's been in development for over a year[2]: they're not quite saying how little is done, and they'll be in over their head in no time. To me, every bit of marketing copy from Ouya seems willfully misleading.

[1] http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality...

[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-o...

It's important to have good skeptics critiquing your product visions. Particularly if they are knowledgable and well intentioned.

With a big vision like this, it'd be concerning if everyone was just cheerleading them on and being yes-men.

The realistic prospect for a product success is rarely heavily scrutinized. And success rates are always statistically quite low.

Mr Charles raises some valid doubts about launch time. They're most certainly not a stretch - considering the tons of horror stories about launching hardware products we've seen on HN.

Let alone attempting to create a whole new market segment in a highly competitive environment - where even with success - making money might be difficult.

"well intentioned"

That's the problem. I'm not sure how a reasonable person can read the outright venom displayed in comment after comment all over the internet and then with a straight face say that it is somehow well intentioned. I don't know why so many people hate anything different that threatens the status quo. I guess it's just human nature. The phenomenon seems to manifest itself particularly in the consumer tech space though. The incumbents get praise heaped on them for doing little more than tweaking and renaming their e-mail service but let a group of people throw some pocket change at a video game console that isn't backed by a multi-billion dollar corporation and all hell breaks loose. I hope the Ouya succeeds if for no other reason than for the haters to have to wipe the egg from their faces. But who am I kidding? They'll just find some other underdog to kick.

As an entrepenuer, I'd LOVE to have people complaining about my idea.

For various reasons:

1) The idea hasnt come to fruition yet, so it can be shaped and molded with feedback. (unlike color or cuil which both hard-launched with a full product and strategy and no sense of reality)

2) People are talking about your company. peroid. Building something that noone cares about or only gets the odd "thats cool" is way worse than having pages of critiscm.

3) Knowledgable people are spending their time analyzing every part of your business. For free.

Once you get past the sensitivity to rejection/bad feedback which all entrepreneurs do in the first year, its not such a bad thing. Although obviously not a goal one should strive for.

> The system simply does not have the power to be that device in your home. ... It is, at best, a tablet

Implicit in your statement is the assumption that "a tablet" is less capable then a dedicated console. Is that necessarily the case? Perhaps the aging console hardware still has an edge in blockbuster first-person shooters, but considering consoles generally render at 600p, I doubt the technical disparity is that considerable.

Oh, it is very much the case. We're talking about, at the very least, dedicated machines with a half gig of memory and hardware whose sole purpose is to run graphics and such without any extra OS layer (for the most part), vs a machine which is meant to have an entire OS running behind the scenes.

But even beyond that, the raw speed of the consoles is unlikely to be matched by one of these tiny integrated ARM devices for quite a while. The raw CPU speed may get there, though it absolutely isn't right now. But the graphics chips? Not a chance. On top of the fact that the integrated chips are flat out slower, they are also lacking a huge amount of features compared to dedicated chips. You need look no further than Open GL ES for iPad to see the major differences.

I don't have raw numbers but if someone were to provide them, you'd see a magnitude of power disparity.

I've backed 3 kickstarter real-world objects - the Cosmonaut stylus, the Elevation Dock (the first $1M+ project), and U.S. made underwear. The Cosmonaut stylus was two months late and blew past its touted it'll-be-a-great-Christmas-gift deadline. The Elevation Dock is 4 months late and counting. Even the underwear looks like it'll be about 3 months late.

And these were projects for things that are "dumb" objects. I don't expect the Ouya to be on time at all.

sidenote: what was your overall satisfaction with what was delivered , and did it live up to expectations.

I just find it hard to understand that people want to buy products on just a guarantee from a team, without reading any type of real world reviews from other people

Well, the only thing that's been delivered that I've bought is the Cosmonaut. I guess it's OK...I've never been too satisfied with iPAd styluses so it lived up to that low bar...but I also paid significantly lower than market price for it. I prefer more precise styluses, after using it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com