By the time you read this, more than 27,000 people will have pledged over $3.5 million to help finance the Ouya campaign on Kickstarter. That beats the Ouya team’s asking price of $950,000 all hollow, and the pledge total will probably climb much, much higher before their crowdfunding campaign closes in the second week of August. Ouya raised more than a million dollars on Kickstarter in less than eight hours, beating out both Double Fine Adventure and the Pebble watch to become the fastest-growing Kickstarter campaign in history. It's a fantastic crowdfunding success story, but plenty of questions remain about why the Ouya campaign is attracting so many donors.
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From systems that could keep your beer cool, to oddities trying to get in on the popularity of VHS and laserdisc, you’ve got some very, very weird video game consoles out there.
I had the LaserActive... it was a nice collectors piece but not very practical. Especially when it came to needing recapping. I think i paid all of about $50 for the floor model from an incredible Universe back in the day. I ended up selling it many years later for $300 at the time due to it needing a new laser and the aforementioned recapping.
An honorable mention not on the list would be the VM Labs Nuon. It basically looked like any regular DVD player but it had ports on it for controllers to play specific games. one of which is still exclusive to it with Tempest 3000. It also offered nuon enhanced DVD movies with extra content not accessible by regular players.
I know 3.5 million is a lot of money to any person, but 3.5 million isn't even a third of what it costs to make a single AAA title on PS3 or Xbox 360.
I admit its an interesting concept, but a console that encourages hacking isn't going to really get a lot of support from online gamers. I can imagine a ton of people using hacks on the games, it doesn't seem like they will be able to police the system very well.
It is probably going to get good support from indie developers and those who don't have the money to have their games on PSN or Arcade.
It's a nice option and a good compliment to what we have already and people see the potential on this and thought it would be good to invest in it.
At $99 it isn't a risky investment as a consumer and it has cheap games so you aren't burning your wallet.
I personally hope to see the success of this device as it gives me hope that people are still innovating in a stagnet console market.
on how fast it's taking off, Maybe Google decides to take the plunge and goes all in..remember recent Google I/O about nexus 7 is a game machine..this system has the same chipset as the google nexus 7.
Google backing this console..hmm could be courting companies like Google to give it the thumbs up?
To me it's quite obvious. As mentioned above, it's a great entertainment center for cheap. But, most of all, it is an amazing outlet for aspiring app makers, game makers etc. Also, u can do whatever u want to it. As far as the warranty goes, how many people will ever go through the hassle of returning it...it's $99. And I think many people see this as a beginning. No, it doesn't compete with current consoles, but a move in this direction is imperative. Google must have a huge smile on their face. They, themselves have been trying to get an entertainment device in people's homes to no success. This could give them the leg up in their apple war (I know they are not directly involved but it's android powered.)
Ouya is making a killing because people think this machine will somehow replace the mainstream consoles. That notion most likely coming from the Ouya team themselves and the way they are spinning this box.
Regardless, basically all this kickstarter is in reality is a very public pre-order promotion. A kickstarter that will give them 80,000+ units pre-sold and they get basically free advertising by word of mouth and the popularity of Kickstarter. Kickstarter quickly becoming the facebook for game development...trendy and the cool thing to do.
My question... how does this company actually make money? From a business plan I scratch my head. No way are they making any kind of profit off a $99 console with the specs they have...so how are they making the money to continue to support this? No talk of subscriptions... Do they think they can survive just off the market place and take a % of every $5 game sold? Or are they games going to have to cost more?