Matti Robinson
26 Jun 2013 9:48
The crowd-funded Android-based console, OUYA, was launched yesterday.
Raising over 8 million dollars in funding via Kickstarter, the company called BOXER8 (since renamed to OUYA) has been manufacturing the low-cost ($99) and open home console, and since AfterDawn was a part of the crowd funding, we got the console a bit beforehand. So let's take a look.
OUYA is an Android based gaming console that is packed into a tiny 3-inch cube. Underneath the shiny cover, it is powered by the quad-core 1,7GHz Tegra 3 T33-P-A SoC, and packs 1GB DDR3 SDRAM.
OUYA outputs to a display via HDMI (v1.4), up to full 1080p with stereoscopic 3D support. For connectivity, it sports a USB 2.0 port, and a microUSB port. For network/wireless connectivity, OUYA has a standard Ethernet port, Wi-FI (802.11 b/g/n) and support for Bluetooth 4.0 (which provides controller connectivity).
One controller is bundled with the OUYA, powered by double A batteries. The controller is wireless and uses Bluetooth. You can have four controllers attached to OUYA.
Definitely one of the OUYAs strengths is the size of the thing. At three inches it couldn't be much easier to position or even hide if you don't like the look of it.
The connectors are more than enough for most people. The only thing grinding gears might be the lack of an audio output.
The ergonomics of the controller are not the worst in the world but you can definitely see and feel that there hasn't been the kind of an R&D circle the controllers of the big three go through. The triggers in particular may have needed more work. The batteries are placed underneath where you hold the device and opening the controller from the top makes it feel a bit cheap.
There's a touch panel on the top of the controller, which we didn't have much use for -- at least in games. You can use it as a mouse to control the UI though.
The console is not built badly by any means, considering it costs only $99 but the sub-par controller is something that makes one look in the direction of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Alternative controllers can be used, but only if the games are compatible with them.
As mentioned, OUYA runs on Android. The version is 4.1 Jelly Bean, on top of which runs the OUYA's own UI. Unfortunately OUYA hasn't replaced all the views with their own UI and Android does shine through in few situations, like Settings and a couple of dialogues.
Being based on Android is not necessarily a bad thing as it should have extremely well thought out wireless support for Bluetooth and WiFi. Unfortunately during our test run both of them had some issues. First we didn't seem to get the BT controller to connect after which we had difficulties with WiFi connecting. Although the fault might have been between the seat and the console for all we know. Thankfully the console does remember the connections so no need for reconnecting so far.
The UI is certainly not the speediest and sleekest and the latency of the controller seems a bit slow. There are a lot of places where thinking about the little details would have also improved the experience quite a bit.
It just feels too much like using an Android smartphone with not much oomph with a cheap 3rd party controller.
Now this should be the beef though, right? Games. It's a gaming console that's meant to be played. Not offering much else out of the box, OUYA is a true gaming console in that sense.
There are currently 173 games for the console -- that's at least what the OUYA website claims. It might be correct and it's plenty if even one in ten is a really good one, preferably a popular title.'
Unfortunately that is not the case. The game experiences you're used to with Xbox and PlayStation are nowhere to be found. The games are like the ones on your smartphone, and not even the good ones for your phone. Most of the games tried were sub-par, even in smartphone terms.
The graphics are one thing. Having the processing power of a 2012 smartphone, OUYA can't really deliver something unbelievable. But neither does the likes of PS2 or Wii. You can have really good games without the next-gen graphics and everyone knows that.
I might be wrong as I have only tried the worst of the bunch – and trying the free trials might leave me without some cool extra features.
As revolutionary it wanted to be and as cool as it did sound on Kickstarter, OUYA does not have a future. Not without some impressive titles coming its way. The hardware is too old already, the UI is laggy and the games just aren't there.
You shouldn't be investing your hard earned cash into this. Invest the hundred dollars to the next-gen Xbox or PlayStation. Or maybe wait for OUYA 2 to come out next year?
Then again there's one thing you might be interested in. OUYA is really hackable, so you might just want a nicely boxed solution for Raspberry Pi-type of machine to run some default Android software. But that is not for the generic gamer OUYA is after. And there are tons of other solutions for such machines as well.