OUYA Dev Consoles Ship December 28

[exfileme]

Developers will get special OUYA consoles starting December 28.

OUYA Dev Consoles Ship December 28 : Read more

 

[darkchazz]

Tegra 3? this thing will be outdated on release.
Why power a gaming console with a chip that can barely even handle 720p resolution thanks to its abysmal memory bandwidth? not to mention the crappy GPU that is based on ancient PC tech scaled down to work on mobile.

IMO they should've went with at least Snapdragon S4 Pro.
But I guess with clever nvidia marketing you can fool most people.

 

[kawininjazx]

[citation][nom]darkchazz[/nom]Tegra 3? this thing will be outdated on release.Why power a gaming console with a chip that can barely even handle 720p resolution thanks to its abysmal memory bandwidth? not to mention the crappy GPU that is based on ancient PC tech scaled down to work on mobile.IMO they should've went with at least Snapdragon S4 Pro.But I guess with clever nvidia marketing you can fool most people.[/citation]

I have to agree, while I love my Nexus 7, my Samsung GS3 is a lot faster overall with the Snapdragon Dual Core and 2GB of RAM. However, the games on the Nexus 7 still run great and look Playstation 2.5 quality.

 

[bigdog44]

Another reason MS is coming out with a set top box...

 

[tipoo]

I'll be keeping an interested eye on this, even if it doesn't go huge 99 dollars for a free to play based gaming console doesn't sound bad, and full versions of games will be much cheaper than traditional consoles.

Those criticizing its its specs need to realize they had to bundle the console and controller in a certain price point, the Tegra 3 is some incredibly cheap and small silicon. I'm not sure about the S4 Pro but the T3 is far smaller and thus cheaper than most current gen mobile SoCs. And 28nm production still hasn't ramped up as much, so there's another ding for going with another chip.

I hope something comes of this, an open gaming console seems like a very interesting idea.

 

[samwelaye]

[citation][nom]darkchazz[/nom]IMO they should've went with at least Snapdragon S4 Pro.But I guess with clever nvidia marketing you can fool most people.[/citation]

Snapdragon S4 Pro was not anywhere near being out when this device was conceived and manufacturing plans started. You can't design a device around a chip that isnt out, then expect to just put it in when the chip is released. Why do you think consoles are always behind PCs? There is a development cycle...

 

[tipoo]

They do take a 30% cut of game pro fits though, I wonder if another truly open gaming box will eventually overtake this idea.

 

[bustapr]

this will hopefully spawn some great indie game devs. thw tegra 3 may not be the best out there, but has enough juice to allow much unexplored creativity on android. im quite interested in seeing the games devs will start making now that an android console with controller is coming out.

 

[mousseng]

I'm still not convinced Ouya will be a success, but hey - I wish them the best, even though I'll likely pass it up. I am wondering, though, if they plan on updating the hardware standard (and if so, how often?) to keep up with the times, or if they'll go the way of their competition and simply release a new console entirely (rather than revising the same design).

 

[teh_chem]

As the very first poster said, I can't comprehend why this platform is considered viable by the inventors, and why the developers and consumers think anything productive will come of it. How much can one really optimize code to utilize hardware with fundamental flaws/limitations? And to what extent? Will consumers want to spend more than $10 on a Tegra3-based game, knowing full well that it's likely a limited lifespan and also more than likely will have poor backwards and forwards compatibility?

 

[bustapr]

[citation][nom]teh_chem[/nom]As the very first poster said, I can't comprehend why this platform is considered viable by the inventors, and why the developers and consumers think anything productive will come of it. How much can one really optimize code to utilize hardware with fundamental flaws/limitations? And to what extent? Will consumers want to spend more than $10 on a Tegra3-based game, knowing full well that it's likely a limited lifespan and also more than likely will have poor backwards and forwards compatibility?[/citation]
and like some others pointed out, this was a kickstarter project that was started pretty much when tegra 3 was considered great and is to this day considered cheap. you cant just promise one thing in a kickstarter and end up changing plans. and you kind of wrong about devs not finding anything productive in it. devs dont look to make games with the best there is, they look to make games with the standard, kind of like consoles. if you release a console that at least around 60k people will have on release and thousands more will buy on day one, you can be sure devs will make games based on this console. also should notice that some of the best games on android are made in 2d with sprites and dont need crazy hardware to run and the most advanced games on android run well on tegra 3.

 

[bit_user]

Couldn't you just do the same thing by hooking up a Tegra 3-based Android tablet to a HDTV and adding some Blue Tooth controllers? Although it's more expensive, the benefit of that option is that you also have a tablet.

They talk about unchaining devs, but if I want to dabble with game development, I'd use my PC. It's simply the best development platform, period. There's still a big PC market out there, and I could always do a phone/tablet port, afterwards.

 

[evilsizer]

I bought one, looking forward to having it. It's not an expensive console no. It's also not supposed to replace consoles. It's a nice little open source game system with some access to other things. It may replace my HTPC, depending on what it ends up being able to do. That alone will be an improvement for me. I think people are placing too many expectations on this thing. I bought one to support a new idea from people with experience in the industry that recognized an area that was being ignored by the console developers. I'm not looking for 4k res, I'm looking for original ideas.

 

[blader15sk8]

While I agree that the Tegra 3 is not only outdated at this point, but was never really that great to begin with (The GPU in the iPad 2 is more powerful...). You also have to take into consideration hardware/software optimizations. Ouya stated they are working closely with nVidia on this to make the best of the tegra, and we have already seen "tegra optimized" games (ie TegraZone), so there could be a market for this after all. This obviously isn't meant to take on the big guys like Microsoft and Sony in the gaming console market, but to provide an open source platform for indie developers to break into the market with truly unique ideas that otherwise couldn't.

 

[teh_chem]

[citation][nom]bustapr[/nom]and like some others pointed out, this was a kickstarter project that was started pretty much when tegra 3 was considered great and is to this day considered cheap. you cant just promise one thing in a kickstarter and end up changing plans. and you kind of wrong about devs not finding anything productive in it. devs dont look to make games with the best there is, they look to make games with the standard, kind of like consoles. if you release a console that at least around 60k people will have on release and thousands more will buy on day one, you can be sure devs will make games based on this console. also should notice that some of the best games on android are made in 2d with sprites and dont need crazy hardware to run and the most advanced games on android run well on tegra 3.[/citation]
It's a proof of concept at best. It lacks any real explanation of a path forward. There are actual physical limitations to the hardware platform that no amount of code optimization will help with. It's not like this is an analog to contemporary big-name consoles like PS3 and XBOX. PS3 and XBOX360 can edge out performance of games even until now because they used PC-based components with tons of headroom. That's not the case for Tegra3. No amount of working closely with nVidia will change that. Check out some of the in-depth analyses of "Tegra3 optimized" games. Nearly all of the graphical additives over the older Tegra2 and previous versions of the game take a toll on the framerate performance, with dips quite low at many times. This is because of the bandwidth limitation of Tegra3. Where the R520-based Xenos chip that was used in the Xbox360 has so much headroom for graphical capabilities and performance over the PC-equivalent X1800 at the time, the Tegra3 platform lacks this. Even with already-optimized code, it shows obvious performance hits. The PowerVR chipset used in the newer iPads has more throughput capabilities than Tegra3. The Tegra platform in general has grown into an overhyped beast--more when it comes to tablets, because OS's and apps have still not been coded to properly take advantage of the system resources. But graphically, the Tegra3 platform faces so many challenges that I would be surprised if an Ouya platform gains any real amount of traction if based on it.

 

[socialfox]

Well too bad the world will end on the 21st

 

[icemunk]

You might not want to be confusing the Tegra 3 on a mobile (Battery powered), with the Tegra 3 in the Ouya (outlet, overvolted). It's not going to be a Xbox 360, but it will work perfectly for casual/arcade/emulator type games.

 

[sykozis]

I'm reading some of the comments here and I'm wondering how old some of the posters are.... I remember "back in the day" when the concern was whether or not a console would get any decent games. The hardware was a non-issue. Now it seems like the only thing people actually care about, is the hardware. Games are negligible. What use is great hardware, if there are no games? Nintendo has already proven (for nearly 3 decades) that you can be successful selling a console with mediocre hardware.

 

[IndignantSkeptic]

Why not just connect a TV and joypads to your smartphone or tablet? Or why not just play games on PC and put Android on it if you want to? Sometimes I'm really dismayed by the stupidity of humans.

 

[Guest]

@socialfox
The world has already ended, but no one has noticed it.