OUYA: $33 Million Failure (What Really Happened) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk

[@ComputerClan]

Enjoy my FINAL episode of 2023! 🔔Subscribe and stay tuned for my Nexus Q episode on January 16. Things are gonna get SPHERICAL! ⚫

[@thewubmachine840]

Our Last Video Of 2023. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!🎄🎄🎄🎆🎆🎆🎇🎇🎇

[@wissamatri775]

O

[@baths4carsraspberrypicomputer]

happy new year

[@Determinedspade]

Happy New Year!!!!

[@mightyraptor01]

Spherical! Member Drake and Josh! Good times. : )

[@bzuidgeest]

Julie is a prime example of all talk, all incompetent, two years at every company. Just long enough to put on your resume, and just short enough to prevent you from getting fired for not living up to your promises. Classic management bull and a major red flag.

[@TheONE10X]

My very first thought. 5 years is about where you figure the company out and decide if you are willing to be who they want you to be.

[@Mrcaffinebean]

“All incompetent” is currently not correct. They built a hardware product, shipped it on time and with relatively minor bugs. That in and of itself is remarkably uncommon. They mistimed the market and failed to bring the big titles like Minecraft. The demand for consoles like this just wasn’t there with the rise of phones.

[@bzuidgeest]

@@Mrcaffinebean the hardware was basically a phone without a built in screen. A standard Android device. Nvidia would have given them the basic implantation. Even incompetent leaders often hire competent people to cover for them.

[@osamu_90]

@@Mrcaffinebean That's the company, the comment is talking about the individual. It's not like she singlehandedly delivered the Ouya.

[@RFLCPTR]

I mean, she has found her place now?

[@catholiccontriversy]

I used my ouya a lot back in college. The small form factor just worked well in my dorm, and the "something is free and side loading is an option" worked great for "broke college student." I ended up using the touch screen a lot because a lot if the side loaded apps needed it. Fun story, I used my ouya to help preserve a delisted android game. In 2019 someone on the lost media wiki discord needed someone with an older version of android to see if the apk they had worked, and I booted up my ouya to see if it worked and it did. Don't remember the game, but I was like "I have an ouya, that has a version of android that's like 5 years old at this point so it's probably old enough," and now the game is preserved as far as I know.

[@krayozmines]

That game preservation is dope! Love to see it

[@messiahmozgus]

Yeah it was a great little emulation box for my bedroom, as long as I used a good controller.

[@headerahelix]

That's awesome. Well done

[@tylern6420]

​@@headerahelix i might have a case of lost media on my old lenovo tablet its some kind of reactor management game that just involves you balancing 3 meters and 3 bars, with occasional maintenance thrown in It seems to have 2 endings as far as i know: - Decommissioned: The plant gets taken off the grid for producing too little power (the game even tells you that the plant needs to produce significant power) - Meltdown (which kinda scared me cause the core went from stable to meltdown): its obvious, but it had a red screen and EAS noise I have tried several times to find it, typing in several combinations of nuclear power plant, or reactor game and no luck I found a game titled nuclear reactor, but that is some wierd hypercasual game that had literally no sounds, and it spammed me with ads until i restricted the apps internet access Yeah, nuclear reactor is completely irrelevant to said lost game As far as i know it probably doesnt exist on the Play Store anymore I might try to put in a new battery into the Tablet, but its janky, slow and its also got pirated apks from the aptoide days (i was dumb back then, but smart enough to delete the games that brought up a PNG of a russian website)

[@tylern6420]

​@@headerahelixthe Tablet is probably like 10 years old, i will not plug it in until the battery is replaced Even then i would probably only do it in a smoorez style stream

[@psychorabbitt]

What's funny about the whole "pixelated Playboy" bit is that Ken is clearly holding an issue of National Geographic.

[@jasonwojcik]

It does have nekkid indigenous people in it periodically... 😂

[@scott8919]

I think that was part of the joke.

[@Stinger420]

LoL! I saw that too! I was gonna say something, but...I guess I was just too caught up and amused by the "Arrrghu?" {{Confused Scooby-Doo sound}} moment.

[@rashidisw]

@@jasonwojcik ah yes a certain Aussie jokes on why certain groups did not represented in Playboy. The jokes said that is because they were represented else where, in particular case the NG.

[@Charlesb88]

NG was long considered “Poor Mans Porn” when that was still a thing. Back before the porn on internet was widely available, teens looking for a porn substitute would look a naked indigenous people in NG, if they weren’t looking at the the bra/underwear/lingerie section of the sears catalog or the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

[@thefilmguy]

I think the biggest issue OUYA ever had was that they never had Google on board so there was no access to the Play Store. OUYA had to try and build their own game store. Which they ultimately sold to Razr and that too has been shutdown.

[@The_Lawnmower_Man]

Incidentally, according to reviews of the Razer Forge TV that I remember seeing back then, one problem with it was that it could not run some Android TV apps from the Play Store (most notably the Netflix app) which worked just fine with the nVidia Shield TV. I'd say that media-streaming apps (and non-game software in general) were a missed opportunity for Ouya; unlike big-budget games, those things don't require high-performance hardware to run well, but the Ouya didn't have official support for many streaming services and its marketing focused on games first and foremost. And to make matters worse for Ouya, Steam was starting to support both indie games (with Steam Greenlight) and TV/living-room gaming (with Big Picture mode) at around the same time, thus making Steam a competitor to Ouya's app store.

[@oasntet]

Adding the Play Store would have meant adding Google's giant bloated Services Framework, too, which would have doomed the entire console to

[@rsqrinsac]

I had a coworker that had one, probably around 2014. He'd bring it in, we'd play, and basically to me it just felt like a fragile emulator, like one of those 1000 in 1 things you'd get for $19.95 at the Walgreens.

[@goose_president5504]

Like one of those 500 in 1 emulators that are somehow "legally" sold in stores at like a five below or as you said a Walgreens

[@RisingRevengeance]

As an owner I can confirm that it really wasn't much more than that

[@madmax2069]

It was basically just a phone without a screen you hooked up to a TV. It pretty much had the same games phones did at the time (which often didn't work too well either due to controller lag or the "dev" took the lazy way out and just used an app that runs with the game maps the touch controls to physical buttons instead of doing work to make the game itself compatible with controllers) and many games still had their touchscreen controls UI still in place. a lot of the games on ouya was just those low quality phone shovelware games lazily ported to try to make some quick cash, but that was only the tip of the iceberg

[@Foxhood]

Well to give it some credit. It was powered by a Nvidia Tegra chip. Which weren't slouches with later models powering the Nvidia Shield devices and the now ubiqutous Nintendo Switch. It wasn't some cheapo rockchip like in your generic "retro handheld" devices. BUT by the time Ouya saw release, the specific Tegra in question was already getting old... This was honestly another problem. The ARM chips of that era had even shorter shelf-lives than modern chips with each generation seeing almost double performance and while phones were already racing towards a yearly release schedule. Stuff like Ouya (which was essentially just a Single Board Computer in a cube shaped case) took years to get to market. Also not helping its status as "hackable" was that it was released not long after the 1st generation Raspberry Pi computers hit the market. Which quickly became the de-factor SBC of choice for anyone looking for a ARM system to play around with and do retro gaming.

[@vapno92]

Well... basically it was just Android-based toy with mobile chip... Okay, it was relatively cheap, but what can You do with it? Play Indie and free-to-play games. when You can already do it on Your Android phone?

[@brab199]

I was working for Target (not currently, I hate Target) during the time this was released. We didn’t sale a single unit. Even when the Ouya was on sale they didn’t move. Once they went on clearance for pennies they finally sold. I had a customer tell me he was buying it as a gag gift haha

[@dovesr0478]

The clip of the CEO refusing to give sales numbers despite being "really pleased" says it all

[@scrappy93]

True and not knowing her own product and competition is ridiculous

[@justsomeguy2743]

My favorite thing is when she was bragging about a touch pad saying no one else had one and the interviewer says “the PlayStation has a touch pad no?” And her face just instantly drops 😭😭😭

[@RusticRonnie]

@@justsomeguy2743to be fair… the PS4 was just announced at that point It was like one month after announcement

[@ZorotheGallade]

Julie's biggest mistake was to assume she could do her own PR instead of hiring someone who would be qualified for the position.

[@theinitiate110]

Julie never struck me as some who knew what they were talking about when it came to gaming.

[@lepterfirefall]

I love how she got the console out of a brown paper bag.. Just oozes premium quality!

[@drygnfyre]

I always assumed this was intentional, since during the same presentation she said over and over again how "there is nothing special about this hardware." I'm not saying it was a great presentation, but I think the point they were trying to make was the Ouya was casual, friendly, not something to be intimidated about. Thus you could just pack it in a brown paper bag like your lunch. Given this was being marketed to a very casual crowd similar to the Wii, I kind of understand the marketing. Even if it wasn't done very well.

[@reaperreaper5098]

@@drygnfyre The point they were trying to make was that it was just standard phone hardware connected to a TV. The issue, the point that they actually made that it was just standard phone hardware connected to a TV. Sure, they INTENDED to imply that it'd be easy to make games for, there were games already there, and that there was going to be some user familiarity going in. What they actual implied was that they took away the only input all games already worked with (to this day, controller support on mobile games is super hit and miss), required new games to support full functionality without being able to use a touchscreen, and that using it would suck because it's a phone that can't be controlled like a phone.

[@crisbwilliams]

You forgot to mention that in the early days people were able to buy the Ouya at Best Buy before those that funded the kickstarter got their units. This pissed off many people and left many with a bad taste. Thats how i got my Ouya and its still fun to play to this day.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

yeah how in the world could OUYA fade out they were such an amazing piece of tech.🤣🤣🤣

[@crisbwilliams]

Im not saying it was a incredible piece of tech, but I do remember people being pissed that people that backed the kickstarter project found it at Best Buy before they even received their kickstarter unit. @@SaraMorgan-ym6ue

[@joemamr710]

The 300ms controller lag makes it useless today, even mostly useless from day 1. I personally think anything above 50ms is unacceptable, every major console manufacturer comes in far, far below that, even from day 2 of wireless controllers 2 decades before.

[@dirkdiggler9379]

@@joemamr710 it wasn’t even that noticeable

[@TurbialesJuega]

This really pissed me of, I'm from spain and was from the last backers to get mine. It was so late that I was aware at the time that the console sucked. One of the biggest letdowns of my gaming life.

[@JamesShow]

Man, I've watched like twenty of these and you are definitely kindest and gave the nicest version of its history. Most videos start with the dumpster fire already in progress. Love it. Happy New Year!

[@TheKnobCalledTone.]

Julie comes across as a "seagull" CEO. She appears to fly in, squawk a lot, crap all over everything, and quickly flies out.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

yeah how in the world could OUYA fade out they were such an amazing piece of tech.🤣🤣🤣

[@messiahmozgus]

Haha I'm gonna use that one.

[@charlesfranks1902]

Don't forget, steals your sandwich on the way out.

[@angelarch5352]

great quote, i also am going to use that in the future:D

[@guybrush1701]

​@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue"OUYA" even sounds like a seagull cry.

[@B-019]

Counterpoint on sporks: they're the perfect utensil for eating mixed rice dishes. But yeah, the Ouya was my first Kickstarter disappointment. Certainly not my last, though...

[@TimothyCollins]

Ouya is another notch on my personal list of "I was wrong". I saw Ouya and thought the same thing as I thought later on when I saw the AtariBox - "Oh gosh, an open platform that people can develop to resulting in an indie game paradise". And I am wrong every time.

[@wesleymays1931]

the steam deck, for example, doesn't seem to suffer from this problem because it's not a new platform, just a new form factor for an already *very* successful one

[@TimothyCollins]

@@wesleymays1931 Truth be told... the console that is the real indie game paradise is strangely becoming the Nintendo Switch. It's cheap to buy and there are loads of decent to great indie games on it for really cheap prices. Lots of crap too, obviously, but there is enough there to be impressive.

[@RetroGameStream]

There isn't any reason to get one now unless it's super cheap or free but I still use mine as an emulation machine and for pretty much anything under N64 it works pretty good!

[@Eye-am-Metalchip]

Vcs seems to be actually still selling compared to other microconsoles

[@CesarAnton]

You were not so wrong, Ouya is now AndroidTV and the direct equivalent would be the Nvidia Shield. I use one (Nvidia Shield Pro) on every TV I have and they are the best for media and awesome for gaming, both android games and PC games via Nvidia service.

[@steampunkskunk3638]

I backed that kickstarter, when it arrived i remember setting it up and downloading 20+ GAME DEMOS. Every game sucked. I came back to it a few times and downloaded over 100 demos. I never found a game worth buying. I found it in a drawer when doing a clean out a month ago and tossed it. Such a disappointment.

[@ScottyT52]

I worked at Best Buy as a home theater supervisor during the time this thing released and I remember how this thing never sold and remember how a few months later the warehouse team were packing up dead stock and shipping it back out.

[@Broken_robot1986]

Wow, so y'all will actually send stuff back to the warehouse? I thought once it was at the store, that's it and the price just keeps dropping till someone takes it.

[@nguyenquyetthang1326]

@@Broken_robot1986 you gotta make space for something else that actually sells

[@NeoTechni]

I used mine in my wedding proposal. We've been married for over 7 years now. Thank you OUYA

[@admiralkaede]

great pfp must say

[@Dram1984]

I used mine as an emulator box for years and it was great. Granted I bought it for $25 from Target after it had already flopped hard.

[@htl2001]

Same, but most of the time I used it for video streaming. Of course by the time I got it I could have just gotten a chromecast.

[@rootbrian4815]

@@htl2001 It does make for a great iptv box.

[@osamu_90]

@@htl2001 Yeah it was surprisingly solid as a 1080p media consumption device lol

[@zmaxx21]

Julie is a good example of failing up. These kind of directors and senior CEOs make me sick.

[@AtrocityEquine01]

The problem with Julie is I don't think she can "qualify" as a CEO of a game company. I mean, she also infamously blasted Tripe A games as overall meh (which while I get Tripe A games are mocked these days, still) and tried to market the OUYA at E3... _outside_ the building. Oh and she also presented the OUYA out of a simple brown bag (NOT plastic as I originally thought). That alone gave bad imprepssions of her and the console. Julie strikes me as similar to Sean of Hello Games (who created No Man's Sky), however unlike Julie, Sean actually _improved_ the game and listened to the criticisms and became a far better CEO.

[@CoachFromL4D2]

Your are exactly right. Julie came out way too abrasive. She may have made an okay CEO, but she was a terrible spokesperson.

[@realretrorelapse]

I think people expected too much from Ouya also. People assumed it was going to be this dope console for hackers, but it was literally a phone in a cube. It wasn't her that made the Ouya not work. Hell, in spite of her, they still got a shitload of backers and raises a ton of money.

[@neilprice513]

The bag she presented the Ouya was a brown paper bag

[@JuakoRanger]

Also, Sean is a developer, not a media presenter

[@deanobeany]

Internet historian did a great breakdown of No Man Sky

[@jworthington85]

I was one of the backers. One of the things that sucked was that those of us that paid for the "collector edition" were pushed to the back of the line at launch. Kind of insulting to be one of the bigger supporters and get told "Yeah, you paid extra so you are going to be the last to get your system"

[@drygnfyre]

People who never backed Ouya at all could just walk into Best Buy and get one, before the actual backers. There was so much that went wrong with the marketing, but that was one of the biggest.

[@protoman1214]

People like Julie move around very purposefully. They can literally drive multiple companies into the ground and still manage to find other insanely high payed positions. I worked for a transit agency and our Director had a reputation from spending 1-2 years at a job. He actually stayed at our company for 15 years, probably because of the disgusting amount of money he made and little oversight whatsoever. Dude ruined so many things at the company, was involved in several sexual misconduct scandals and somehow got a job at an international company making even more money

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

yeah how in the world could OUYA fade out they were such an amazing piece of tech.🤣🤣🤣

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I know a similar CEO in a Housing role, his CV had him move every 2 years, and it sounded alarm bells with us tech people, his management removed so many experienced people and caused horrific occurrences like placing a CS offender in a home near a school.

[@deansmits006]

Failing their way to the top!

[@jdsheleg8332]

The problem with many of these "experts" is that they become experienced, supposedly, but do not stay long enough to be actually "seasoned", which takes real time, not just a couple of years enough to "check the box".

[@BigTylt]

The funniest thing about Ouya was all the Linux and OSS channels hyping it up as if it was going to single-handedly take down Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.

[@F40PH-2CAT]

Cuz woman

[@kagari1426]

Wasn't that an actual article or something about it being the killer of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo

[@username7763]

I got quite excited about the Indrema console back in 2000. That was a linux open source console that died. So I have some appreciation for that enthusiasm although I didn't share it with the Ouya. There was nothing about the Ouya that I saw to get me excited. It is yet another cheap android box.

[@JaggedBird]

If only it was in more competent hands, it might've been possible

[@ethanissupercool7168]

Well to be fair, thanks to Valve, Linux is now a viable option for gaming now, it’s just that ouya was created before proton

[@callme_Sweetpea]

Excellent and fair video on the OUYA. I loved the OUYA platform, and hated the controller. I've always said that the main reason for OUYA failing is because the people behind it (mainly Julie). It was way ahead of it's time. All in all, you said what I've said for years when getting into discussions about the OUYA, plus a bunch more I that never crossed my mind. Again, excellent video!

[@JamesR624]

15:40 "We may never know why" usually always translates to "Certain people gave a good chunk of money to the right people."

[@10p6]

A big issue when Ouya was announced is a whole lot of backers and developers wanted Ouya to use the Tegra 4 which was available, but they did not. If they would have used the Tegra 4, had more RAM, an SD card slot and more USB, dropped the controller and charged $99 for the main unit, Ouya would have ended up being an Emulation powerhouse like Mister is today.

[@bryanpope6573]

IT simply would have cost more.

[@tattooeddragon]

After watching your video and hearing about Julie I can understand why she was at multiple companies for only a two year stretch. I’m sure she was always thinking “damn I hope they don’t see through me”

[@SadSackGaming]

In all fairness, from what I remember hearing about tech is that a lot of people move on from jobs in like 2 or 3 year stints, especially if they are trying to leapfrog into better positions. So while it does sound distressing, it’s closer to a stupid norm now.

[@giornikitop5373]

@@SadSackGamingtrue, except the fact that she had no idea of the industry she was at and didn't bother to learn about it.

[@sfdntk]

That's an insane take. Firstly, it's extremely common for devs to change jobs every couple of years to chase higher salaries and gain experience in different aspects of the industry, and in fact for millennials and gen z it's now common across all industries. This isn't the 1960s any more, people don't become company men who get one job and work at one place until they retire with a company-funded pension. Secondly, whatever it's flaws, Ouya was an incredibly complex and ambitious project that actually shipped a working, if not perfect, product. Anyone who knows anything at all about hardware development knows that that's an astonishing accomplishment. The vast majority of hardware projects, especially in this space, fail miserably before they even cross the first hurdle. Again, Ouya may not have been perfect, but they shipped thousands and thousands of units that met the hardware specifications promised, it had a full development ecosystem, a functioning app store - the amount of work, skill, and tenacity required to pull something like that off is gobsmacking. Not one developer in a hundred has the combination of skill and luck required to bring a project like Ouya to fruition, for you to minimise that by implying Julie was somehow incompetent is insanely ignorant.

[@The_Lawnmower_Man]

​@@SadSackGaming " _especially if they are trying to leapfrog into better positions_ [...] _it’s closer to a stupid norm now._ " -- That's so true. What's *really* awful about this practice is that it prevents companies from retaining institutional knowledge. In the software industry, for example, extreme turnover rates of employees tends to prevent software projects from being maintainable in the long term. When a development team no longer has enough people who understand the codebase that the team is in charge of maintaining, that causes the codebase to eventually deteriorate into such a buggy mess that it cannot be salvaged & must be replaced completely, similar to what happened with Ashton-Tate's dBASE... as well as causing *severe crunch time* for those few team members who 've stayed on the team longer than all the rest. I'm speaking from bitter experience here.

[@johnsabilla5897]

I was in college back in 2013, I was in the video game dev club. One week, we got an email that Julie Uhrman was coming to campus to speak to the club. It was 60 minutes of just her hyping OUYA. It felt weird, soo many red flags about what she said. She said, they are developing an SDK that would be free for devs, Games will be free to try, they had partnership with AAA dev companies. She gave away some OUYA consoles to club members, I still have mine. I never really used it because of the overwhelming negative reviews online and from my fellow club members.

[@oppossumX]

I had an ouya I bought used for $20 in 2014. Used it for about 5 years as a plex client for my non-smart TV. Not exactly the intended use case but it served me well.

[@derAtze]

I mean after all it's just an android tv box with a controller instead of remote

[@ChristianRamses]

This Julie character! She is so competent that she can do anything anywhere! For two years.

[@michaelangeloabarreto4588]

I think my favorite moment was when she said the controller touchpad has NEVER been done before. The interviewer then was like "Uh well the PS4" LOL

[@bryanpope6573]

The controller touchpad was out way BEFORE the PS4. So Sony got the idea from Ouya.

[@Ignacio.Romero]

@@bryanpope6573 Lol the PS4 was in development way before the Ouya

[@linux_doggo]

Somehow I'm not convinced a giant company like sony was worried about stealing the thunder from a random upstart that wasn't directly competing with them ​@@bryanpope6573

[@jerryknudsen7898]

The saddest part about her saying "there's nothing special about this board" was the fact it was pretty impressive for it's time. I have an asus Transformer prime (i think thats the name of it), basically windows RT laptop/tablet with the tegra 3, and it appeared as well in the Nvidia shield handheld, and the nexus 7 which was very beloved, and also an HP tablet i bought forever ago to game on. It really was a gaming and higher performance focused SoC, even if it didn't have the raw computation of a snapdragon 800 series. If they made that in a $50 console, that couldn't have left much room for profits.

[@madmax2069]

The controller latency was due to the fact that both the wifi signal and the Bluetooth signals was competing with each other all the while being partial blocked by the aluminum that made of the majority of the case. wifi connections was unstable as a result as well. If you disabled one or the other the one that you didn't disable would get a a lot better but was still very noticable (controller latency wasn't as bad, or the wifi connection wasn't as flakey), it wasn't until you took the board out of the ouya case that the wifi and Bluetooth issues pretty much went away.

[@TacticusPrime]

Jesus. That seems like something that should have been caught at an early stage...

[@Trainboy1EJR]

If I had known that it was that easy to fix the controller issues I may have gotten one myself…

[@MLWJ1993]

Should've gone with a detachable antenna 😅

[@Jayenkai]

As an indie dev who enjoyed putting his games on the telly, I frickin' LOVED the OUYA! ... 100 games! Woot!!

[@Ilix42]

I remember when the OUYA was announced. A bunch of people I worked with at the time thought it was going to super take off, but it was so clearly not going to. The idea of a cheap console was too appealing for a lot of people to think about the viability of a console based on a mobile platform, especially back then.

[@canthearu4876]

Nintendo Switch is a mobile platform (Nvidia Tegra) .... it isn't the hardware that makes the biggest contribution ... it is the games you can bring to that console that will draw in the game players.

[@L33tSkE3t]

The OUYA had an NVIDIA TEGRA 3 chip in it and the NVIDA Shield handheld that came out around the same time also utilized a TEGRA chip and was very capable. Also, the Nintendo Switch, which came out a few years later, used a faster TEGRA X1 and is one of the best selling consoles of all time so I don’t think the issue was the mobile platform, especially considering how successful other mobile devices that utilized the same or similar mobile hardware and software platform were, such as the NVIDIA Shield line of gaming devices.

[@Ilix42]

For those of you saying the Switch is a mobile platform, congrats, you’re some of the people who don’t get it. The Switch is not based on a mobile platform (Android), it’s a console that was made to be mobile. It was built from the ground up to be a premium console that was mobile, not to be a glorified mobile device that you couldn’t really use on the go. The OUYA was designed to run programs that were, in turn, designed to be used on mobile devices with touch interfaces. The Switch was designed to run games, and everything related to it (including dev kits) were based on that. Again, comparing the OUYA and the Switch is the same ignorant viewpoint that made people think the OUYA had a chance to begin with.

[@L33tSkE3t]

⁠@@Ilix42 I used the Nintendo Switch as a secondary example of a successful Mobile Games system using similar mobile hardware as the OUYA but, was mostly comparing OUYA to the NVIDIA Shield Portable and the later Shield Console. Doing so because they were also both dedicated gaming devices utilizing an NVIDIA Tegra SoC and running an Android based OS, to show that there were successful hardware products that were both mobile based gaming systems running a mobile OS, specifically a slightly modified version of ANDROID like that of the OUYA, all on the same or similar NVIDIA TEGRA hardware platform built for other mobile and low-powered devices like the Shield and Switch. There’s no need to be so defensive or call people “ignorant”, especially considering that you’re the one who’s argument starts to fall apart at the mere mention of the existence of the NVIDIA Shield portable and console.

[@dsp4392]

@@canthearu4876 Exactly. It's never been about the hardware and always about the games. People buy these things to play games, not to marvel at the megahertz and the gigabytes. The fact that the Switch succeeded while the Ouya and the Shield flopped is because they didn't just make a console then waited for devs to do the hard work. Nintendo made their own games and leveraged their existing relationships with devs to create a real gaming ecosystem. Ouya put the -cart- console ahead of the -horse- games.

[@GOPACKERSJT]

As a former Ouya game dev, it had promise..... but...... the controller was TERRIBLE! The OG console had an aluminum chassis that made the Wifi and BT struggle to get a good signal. Pair with an aluminum cover for the controller and connection was so spotty. The joysticks also sucked and were difficult to get a grip with them. Software was decent, the Tegra 3 was good enough, but man was it poorly designed. They did eventually come out with a pull plastic console that helped, but it was too late.

[@SavvySage]

Glad to have helped out with the research for this episode! As usual, I'll provide a few interesting tidbits that weren't mentioned... - One of the first OUYA exclusives announced was a prequel to Human Element, which unfortunately never got released...nor did the main game for that matter. - OnLive (an early attempt at cloud gaming) was supposed to launch with the OUYA, but it ultimately never happened due to OnLive's financial difficulties at the time. - Vevo and iHeartRadio were supposed to launch their apps with the OUYA, but never did for unknown reasons. - Not too long after the OUYA came out, Muffi Ghadiali returned to Amazon to work on the highly successful Fire TV. He then went on to work in the electric vehicle charging industry, first with ChargePoint, before founding Electriphi, which is now known as Ford Pro Charging, after Ford acquired the startup in 2021. - One year after Razer acquired OUYA's assets, they acquired a company you may have heard of: THX. - As a Jackbox Games fan, it's worth noting that before June 2013, they used to be known as Jellyvision Games-their first title under the Jackbox Games banner was a port of You Don't Know Jack (2011) on the OUYA. They would later port that to the Amazon Fire TV, which also received a new, original game from them that would define their legacy: Fibbage. - It's possible to get a form of Linux running on the OUYA, specifically Debian and Ubuntu...with mixed results. More information can be found here: tuomas.kulve.fi/blog/2014/03/24/ubuntu-on-ouya/

[@L33tSkE3t]

Really informative. Thanks for the additional insight

[@SavvySage]

@@L33tSkE3t No problem!

[@martinmatassa5120]

Saved me some money by just watching you for a few minutes but you really affirmed what I suspected all along. I’ve gotten burned so many times buying on line I've decided to stick to brick and mortar stores that have a history of staying power. If the store has been paying rent for decades on multiple stores across the country I figure they must be doing something right. Even if they're on the verge of bankruptcy some other company will likely buy them out or up and carry on with an even better an more improved pricing and marketing plan. They have after all just bought a history of mistakes & Failures along with what succeeds from what their own company is doing.

[@cancelhandles]

Ahhh, OnLive. I played Just Cause 2 on terrible hardware with that thing for quite some time.. and then it died, along with my copy of JC2.

[@rustkitty]

Every time a console does shocking or experimental ads I want to grab them by the shoulder and shout "stop this and just do Segata Sanshiro!" at them.

[@Jadiaz-ev9hm]

Bought one at a Target on clearance with a controller for 25 bucks. At that price it was a fun thing. My kids still mess with it. I would have never paid full price.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

so you can Hack this console sounds fishy to me🤔

[@Jadiaz-ev9hm]

@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue what? Who said anything about hacking?? Are you ok? Do you need help?

[@McVaio]

@@Jadiaz-ev9hm It's a bot, repeating random comments.

[@sethfoxen]

I was a Kickstarter backer for the OUYA. It was neat to mess around with, and the easy-to-root solution was my favorite part. I immediately rooted it, and used a Tegra tweaker app to overclock it, and lock the cycles to the highest. Then I put a big ol external drive on the USB port, paired a PS4 controller to it eventually, and I used it exclusively as an emulation machine up until around 2018 when I bought an actual Android TV box to replace it. It was fun while it lasted.

[@Mario583a]

What really killed OUYA was the CEO calling video games "television games".

[@3rdalbum]

It didn't hurt the guy in Pepsiman.

[@stonerhino83]

It was also a huge part of the Xbox sales pitch in 2013. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pIavoWOmfLB2iZo

[@ringringbananarchy]

I feel like you missed another reason for the "failure". You mention how the games weren't selling very well, so developers weren't supporting the system. A large number of enthusiasts figured out that the Ouya was a cheap ready made emulation box, since it had the ability to be easily changeable with the root access. A LOT of Ouyas were turned into emulation boxes filled with ROMS. And none of those people bought any games. They just downloaded ripped roms. Why pay for new games when you can just play all those old games free forever.....and because of that, the developers kind of abandoned the system, leaving hardly any good games for normal people to buy, meaning no reason for them to buy the Ouya.

[@WaffleTM420]

You don’t know how much your videos make my day, I was feeling really down today because of family issues and etc and when I saw the notification for a new computer clan episode I felt joy. Thank you for making this video about Ouya to since they aren’t a well known brand and I’ve always wondered what their console even did. Thank you once again :)

[@FraggnAUT]

._.

[@Markimark151]

I remember when the Ouya concept or Boxer8 was rumored in 2011 as a budget game console for people that just wanted to play new games at $100. I was sort of excited about it, but when they announced the system on kickstarter and the specs were underwhelming, I warned people to not support the Ouya! And Rich from RTU got duped into buying it and regretted it! The controllers were awful! Ouya was years late to the market, especially when the Wii dropped to $99 in 2013! That was way more enticing than the Ouya!

[@michaelfloyd1127]

You missed the part where Julie takes the OUYA and the controller out of a paper bag at same interview.

[@rswear]

There does seem to be a pattern of CEO's out there who bounce around from company to company and leave broken companies in their wake. Why the next company hires them without considering their actual track record is beyond me.

[@Smaxx]

I remember seeing the Kickstarter campaign and only reason I didn't think about backing the project was my lack of a credit card back then. And I think you also missed one (IMO) important legacy point here: The Ouya was possibly like a proof of concept for Nintendo's later Switch. You can do a desktop console with a mobile chip, you just need some extra power and the library to pull it off.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I remember the ouya launch, within 2 weeks a local shop had multiple units in the window for just £40 because people decided to sell them at a loss in disgust.

[@Ray2Jerry]

Not only was I an "Ouya sucker" but I even kickstarted the special limited edition brown custom engraved one 🤣😂 I even had a short social media discussion with Julie about being an extra special rube that I don't remember now.

[@dracopug]

How did the Ouya work out for you, did you enjoy it much?

[@Ray2Jerry]

@@dracopug Not really... The (few) games were just typical mobile shovelware and the controller was atrocious to use, complete garbage 😂🤣 Still, no regrets, at least I got SOMETHING.

[@projectneovice]

10:42 I absolutely love how that illustration looks nothing like Maddy irl. It's like a drawing of a completely different person.

[@DeadPixel1105]

Funny you say that. I never even heard of Maddy before this video, yet even I saw that drawing and thought: "I bet she doesn't look anything like that." All these uber-nerds with little anime-style avatars do that. Whether it's a woman or a dude. The actual person will look like Jabba the Hut, yet their little avatar looks like an anime-style super model 😂

[@cloudirubez07]

Either that or the png of a character with a flag on the background, picrew pfp, etc 😂 it’s almost like the jokes wrote themselves at this point, I mean can you expect anything else from Celeste of all games? Damn near everyone who worked on that game were all the exact same lmao, and apparently the main character too. Usually you’ll find it’s trans people the most who get some poor Twitter artist to draw them looking like a cutesy anime girl when they look like Hulk Hogan irl, the Ricky Berwick meme explains it best lol.

[@Apache616]

Rerez also did a video about Ouya and it was pretty hilarious as well. Definitely a fun watch. Also i really enjoyed this video too. Funny how you both made the same joke about Julie’s love for the television, I’m sure it was a coincidence. This was still a great video. I’m always excited to see more videos.

[@goncalo33]

So did Crowbcat, if memory serves me right. That's where that joke started.

[@jmal]

"His name is Oogie, and he kickstarts my heart maaaaaannn!!!” - Hippie Shane

[@Apache616]

@@jmal that’s one of my favorite parts 😆

[@3rdalbum]

One of the major problems is the attach rate. See, many people bought the Ouya intending it to be an emulation box. That part of the market did not buy games. The statistic for how many games purchased by each Ouya owner was, iirc, less than 1. No developer is going to make games for a platform where the average customer has no intention of buying anything. And it deprived Ouya of an ongoing revenue stream.

[@Notsram77]

I know I'm on the outside here, but I loved my Ouya. So many amazing hours spent playing In Plain Sight, Towerfall, and Knightmare Tower. It was compatible with literally every controller we had in the house, and it was a mainstay at all of our get togethers.

[@neilprice513]

What ultimately killed the Ouya, from basically day one, was most owners didn't buy games. They either just played the free demos and/or hacked the system for emulation purposes. Console manufacturers sell their consoles at a loss and make their revenue from licensing the console's use to third party developers as well as their fees per game sold. If a console doesn't sell games it dies. Ouya never sold that many games, so it failed.

[@helmutlvx]

The fact that Ken censored a copy of National Geographic rather than purchase a Playboy is just an amazing gag

[@Stevo.100]

Me when this just released: "Oh, ya better not buy this" I'm not joking either, it was my facebook status and every now and then in one of those "memories" I'll see it and have a giggle.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

The focus on the "television" from Julie was the singular thing that made me an Ouya skeptic.

[@RotatingLocomotive]

The best ouya did is that the retrospective videos like this are super cool.

[@rvoisey]

I got two Ouyas to take apart and hack on. It was a pretty well executed bit of hardware for the price at the time (except the controllers which were junk). More could have been made of it with better management I think.

[@UnCoolDad]

I was a kickstarter for Ouya. I asked for a refund after numerous delays, and them shipping to retail before their kickstarter supporters. Seems I got my refund just in time.

[@Wfmike]

Julie is an entrepreneur she doesn't know gaming and you can tell. The other day i hear her talk on the radio about something about football and i get the same vibe.

[@McVaio]

VIBE

[@MarginalSC]

I remember people super hyped at the launch. I was always confused since it basically just seemed like a cell phone platform without any of the convenience.

[@ladymctavish3299]

I don't know why I'm always excited for an Ouya video but here we are.

[@yackablejohnson1485]

They're also was the white limited edition which fixed the latency issue of the controller by adding shielding, and a new Bluetooth chip. It also came with more ram.

[@goldmmoking]

I love seeing new takes on things like the Ouya, thank you for making this!

[@shadowtheimpure]

The Ouya was a concept before its time. With the recent boom in powerful but small SBCs today, a concept like this could potentially have more viability these days as opposed to back then. In fact, the modern 'equivalent' would be things like the NVIDIA Shield TV and other powerful gaming-capable Android boxes.

[@ChemitoRodriguez]

A couple quick thoughts: 1) Did they get that 'Sixty Bucks for a Game?' video idea from Quizno's? 2) Why not call the 2.0 version the Nouya?

[@KeiNova]

I almost bought one of these and was upset when I missed out. Then, a few months later, I was so happy I missed out. The hype really was massive at the time. Hard to think this was so long ago, honestly.

[@rickkarrer8370]

Great video. I didn’t realize it was such a complicated story. I almost bought one, but wanted to wait to see how the platform developed, then I started getting the sense that Julie didn’t really know what she was doing. “Fakin it until you make it” is exactly the vibe I was getting (not at first, though), and it quickly appeared it was going to under deliver. I guess I was hoping that developers would find a way to make it compelling, but that never panned out. That being said, had it been introduced for the first time today, using today’s technology available at that price point (or maybe $149-199), and focusing more so on using the Google Play Store and Steam, then I think it would be pretty successful… though more likely to be a dockable portable device, like many of the Switch inspired devices we see today. of course, no one would trust that brand again, so it’s too late for it to make a resurgence.

[@calipurnioelreydelodio7141]

It is what it is selling right now. The Steam Deck, the Asus ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go... They took the idea that Ouya was offering, and make it work.

[@110jmartin011]

the best part was " how many you sell??" --> " A lot!"

[@BrianHartman]

I think the Ouya died because it really *was* "nothing special". They put phone hardware in a box and tried to sell that as a console. When you're competing against Sony and Microsoft, that's not going to fly. Sure, you weren't paying PlayStation or Xbox money for the privilege, but you were only getting games proportional to what you paid.

[@RisingRevengeance]

I think it could've done better if it wasn't for all the overpromises. But yeah even then it just wasnt good hardware no matter the price, especially that controller.

[@BrianHartman]

@@RisingRevengeance Yeah. I never had one, but the controller sounds like it *really* sucked.

[@RisingRevengeance]

@@BrianHartman you didnt miss out. I think the ouya as a whole has some redeeming qualities but the controller is the worst I've ever used.

[@FatedGamer]

I dont know but as someone who was a young adult around the time this came out and was an avid gamer.....I dont think this had any effect on the market. I heard next to nothing about it and it really had no impact for me. To me steam greenlight or other things had way more impact on making indie games viable.

[@ThePrufessa]

The jawbone jambox was AWESOME!!!! I still have two of my original ones and a few of the subsequent minis that came out. Bot a lot of 4 from eBay. Had problems updating the firmware due to support shutting down. Had to find it on a file sharing site.

[@all.day.day-dreamer]

I was one of the early backers to Ouya, along with a lot of other people. I did have to wait a good period of time before I received mine, and I cannot remember how long, but my Ouya did eventually show up way before retail launch. I remember being unimpressed and not being about to do much. I also remember the UI being buggy. I sold it 3 or 4 weeks later to a couple of guys, and they were shocked that I had one so early. I sold it for $130 or $140 and maybe a little money off of it.

[@bronwynecg]

Soooo glad my laziness saved me from this. I was too lazy to open a kickstarter account to give them money 😂😂😂✌🏽

[@mrn234]

For me it was mostly "Wtf iam supposed to do with this shit i cant do with my PC"

[@TheErlend87]

​@@mrn234Same, vut I did see the value in a cheap gaming box

[@KaiMangaKnight]

When I was in London back in 2013, I saw a stock pile of Ouya. Was tempting to pick one up, but I'm so glad I didn't. It wasn't worth it afterall.

[@ThatSoddingGamer]

Ouya Backer - I used it like a couple of days before I stopped bothering. It really ran kind of crap in my experience, and whilst they might eventually improve it, it was a terrible first impression. And yes, Julie seems at least a significant part of the problem leading to its demise. It's just not a good sign when a key figure in the company, the face of it really, has a history of bouncing from company to company, not sticking around more than a couple years or so. There are legitimate reasons for making repeated moves like that, like getting pay bumps as other companies recognize you're worth more than you're currently being paid, but generally it just makes it look like she probably had good specs on paper (education, working at recognized companies in decent positions, etc.), but the fact that none of the companies were keen to hold on to her seems telling. In those samples, she seems a hype agent that didn't bother to actually pay close enough attention to the product she was hyping, or the market.

[@meenstreek]

I was at the Foundry in San Francisco during a thursday gaming night and there were a couple of Ouya's setup for people to use and I turned to a friend pointing them out and we went into a discussion around the failure that is Ouya. A guy standing next to us chimed in saying that he was one of the people who helped develop the product. Talk about an embarassing yet hilarious moment! Almost as bad as when I was in Hawaii and going out to dinner with a buddy to the Cheesecake Factory (I know >

[@Donuts_random_stuff]

Cool, yt gave me a notification when it was posted instead of 2-5 minutes after 😂

[@FeloniousSavage]

Ole' big head Krazy Ken at it again with another banger video 💪😎

[@ELmeinz]

I discovered a bunch of interesting indie video games with the Ouya, I'm happy I had one

[@gameworkerty]

14:06 - As a young dev I was a part of this program. At the time I joined, OUYA were not upfront about the fact that this matching fund is only paid out AFTER your game ships, which makes it useless in the context of funding development alongside our kickstarter. I understand that they had to protect their funding platform, but honest developers who needed money to develop their game got punshied I guess. OUYA failing and our publisher subsequently backing out eventually killed the game before it could be finished.

[@Foxhood]

I think the Ouya may have been an inspiration for the Nintendo Switch. Which too is a Nvidia Tegra based device, but avoids the performance problem by putting itself forward as a hybrid between their console and their handhelds, which appropriately set expectations (high, but realistic)

[@RisingRevengeance]

If anything they were probably more inspired by Nvidias own Shield Portable. Still one of the best handhelds of all time.

[@Foxhood]

@@RisingRevengeance Oh it is almost certain the Shield was another inspiration. After all, it is the partnership with nintendo that killed the possibility of a Shield 2 as the special Tegra chip slated for said shield successor was rendered to be exclusively used for nintendo's "Project NX". But that is why i say AN inspiration. The switch is a like a unholy union of Ouya's original idea of an ARM based TV Console and Nvidia's tablet (which may itself be an evolution by Nvidia on the Tegra Ouya used). So i think its safe to say both are inspirations. But since this is an Ouya video, i just kept that that half.

[@RisingRevengeance]

@@Foxhood Fair I disagree about the ouya being an influence of anything personally though. As a side note I'm really bummed we'll never see another shield portable. And that no big companies are making (small) handhelds anymore.

[@paulphillips3783]

Epic presentation as always. I actually stumbled across my Ouya cleaning out a cupboard recently - a wave of temporary nostalgia followed - briefly. There were some genuinely great games on the platform. The try before you buy approach also held the console back, more work for the developers with no benefits to them.

[@Facepalm9]

I was an early OUYA backer and even an admin on their official forums. It was a dark time in my life trying to convince myself that this thing had any legs. It's currently collecting dust in my closet.

[@El1988Che]

Ah! I got curious and decided to see if my Ouya still worked and it sure does. I remember doing the new server modification when it was first launched, to my surprise everything is still up and running haha

[@Surannhealz]

I have a display of game consoles. When the Ouya was on crowd funding, I bought it specifically because I knew it would fail but wanted to have a nice clean specimen of the failure.

[@callumbush1]

Uhrman is a classic example of always failing upwards!

[@josephc8482]

I backed the Ouya on Kickstarter, but when I received it I was just getting ready to start post graduate schooling and didn't think I'd have time to mess around with a maker toy/budget game console. Thankfully I was able to sell my console in the window between Kickstarter backer shipments and regular market shipments. Every news article I ever saw about Ouya made me glad I made that decision. Even going in, I had no illusions it'd be great. I just wanted to mess around with android and couldn't afford a tablet ($200+ for the worst ones at the time) or afford a data plan for a smart phone. But the bad controller and functionally dead ecosystem would've made it complete e-waste for me. Couldn't even be a good emulation box because of the controller

[@SadSackGaming]

Ouya was something no one truly wanted trying to fill a niche that didn’t and doesn’t exist. There are tons of boxes that can emulate consoles, that can play android games, do streaming services and whatnot and no one is going after them like gangbusters. The only reason people own a box is because they don’t have a smart TV and those numbers are shrinking. There is ultimately no reason this thing needed to exist then and probably not even now because there’s no incentive for devs to sign an exclusive when someone can and will make a knockoff version of your game for android and get all your sales before you are allowed to get there. Yes, the idea is interesting, but was ultimately a bad idea that came with a terrible controller. There is literally no reason to reinvent the console controller when two exist and are built around long term use. Even Nintendo with their pro controller used a more generic looking controller. I don’t even know why I am so annoyed still with this thing. It wasn’t one of those, if only they had done this, it could have rocked. This is something up my alley and only a hundo and it was like, well, I do have my iPad or iPhone or Android and it plays games and I have my Xbox and PlayStation and whatever Nintendo was around at that time, so why would I buy this when I have all this and other random crap slapped onto my TV.

[@davidlane1248]

I owned an ouya. I wanted it to succeed because i believed in the concept of a mobile chip microconsole with accessibility and affordability as the front and center ideology 10 years later and I believe in that concept even more, now that mobile chips are actually fairly impressive and the implementation of controller friendly games on Mobile platforms is bigger than it's ever been But you know what killed it for me on the ouya? For starters, i only started to enjoy it after i plugged in an xbox 360 controller... And later it became the box that was only busted out for towerfall when we had friends over

[@ericselim254]

Microconsoles are a dumb concept. Like, what audience are they even aimed at? Who wants to plays phone quality games on TV? If you're a gamer you'll want to play core games on a PC or a full-fledged game console. If you're a casual you'll be fine with gaming on your phone.

[@joshua.snyder]

Intellivision Amico: "Hold my beer. Watch us raise $17 million and not produce a dang thing."

[@anotheruser9876]

OUYA, or as I called it, The Dreidel™

[@silmarian]

That animated ad felt extremely 90s, Ren and Stimpy-era. I don’t hate it, but there’s a reason we left that behind for ads.

[@MrJCerqueira]

"we" left it behind? do you write ad copy?

[@silmarian]

@@MrJCerqueira There's a lot more involved in advertising than writing copy.

[@theodoros_1234]

You always nail it with these videos, keep it up!

[@Seed]

Seed money?

[@BoxOfToasters]

Seed money.

[@Rad_Dan]

I had an Ouya. Honestly I really liked it, too. It was a decent little emulation machine and streaming box. I don’t know where it is now, but that was $100 well spent, in my opinion

[@thatzaliasguy]

Still have my OUYA transparent dev kit. Fun little collectible.

[@dnakatomiuk]

I do love that Macodore 64 in the background