How the Ouya Failed - A Kickstarter Disaster
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- Опубликовано: 23 июн 2019
- The Ouya is one of the highest-funded campaigns on Kickstarter, raising millions of dollars on the crowdfunding platform as a new indie game-driven games console. Even after the Kickstarter, it raised tens of millions of dollars from other investors.
Yet despite the financial success at the start, the Ouya failed miserably. The final nail in the coffin came on June 25, 2019, when Razer (who bought Ouya in 2015) finally pulled the plug on the online store. It’s been a long time coming, but the Ouya was a disaster long before this.
How did the Ouya fail? Was it doomed from the start? And what happened to the people involved with the console? Watch today’s video to find out!
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#Ouya #Kickstarter 
Игры
Cut content time! I originally had a bit of a diatribe in this video talking about my time owning an Ouya. I pre-ordered one in early 2013 and got it a month after it hit store shelves, because of course. I cut it from the video because it was little more than 10 minutes of unrelated rambling.
But if you’re interested, I talked about the build quality of the console and the controller itself. The controller felt great ergonomically, the shape of it fit into my hands perfectly, and is genuinely one of the best controllers I’ve ever felt. But it was completely ruined by how cheaply it was made. It was made out of low quality plastic and aluminum, and felt like it was going to break apart if you gripped it too tightly. Indeed, it did, as the controller had these removable face plates for the batteries, and they would frequently come off (at least in my case). The buttons were somehow too stuff and gummy simultaneously, and the touchpad was useless. Unlike the one on the PS4 controller, it had no tactile boundaries, so you never knew if you were touching it or not without looking down at it every so often.
The console itself was also cheaply made. It weighed nothing, and there was no metal weight inside it, so the stiff HDMI cable I used actually lifted the console off the shelf and held it up in the air at an angle. Pressing the on button also felt like you were going to shatter it.
The games were boring too, so much so that I have almost nothing to say about them. That’s why I didn’t really talk much about them in the video. There really isn’t anything to say. The “Ouya Exclusive games” just felt like slightly updated mobile games. Nothing special or interesting that didn’t later get ported to other consoles, the PC, or mobile.
I ended up putting the Ouya in a cupboard after just two months, and then sold it online three or four months later for $60.
I agree with your assessment of Mobile Games...at the time but When a Game CAN be rendered unplayable by the developers just shutting the Game down makes mobile gaming the Worse form of Gaming.
Temtem is a Kickstarter scam
Am I the only one who noticed there was a pretty pronounced input lag on Ouya games, too, or was that just me? Like, everything else I completely agree with (especially about the HDMI cable and the buttons feeling gummy yet stiff) but I also noticed a really distinct input lag.
We all knew it was in trouble when Julie got publicly schooled on the PS4 having a touchpad on a far superior controller. She obviously had no concept of what the competition could do or even who her customer base was.
Not exactly surprising - look at her job history - she's a PR flinger - she's a CEO adviser - she's good with BUSINESS but what the hell she was doing on the TECH end of things I have NO idea...
@@2Scribble she’s now doing the same thing in football (soccer). Opening up a womens football team in LA. It’s gonna fail miserably as she’s throwing out lots of buzz and hype words and not anything about football itself lol.
@@2Scribble It has nothing to do with "tech", it is about knowing your market. Any even mildly successful entrepreneur knows you have to do market research before doing ANYTHING. You have to know what the competition HAS and likely WILL have and what people are buying and wanting to buy.
She looks like the typical dingbat who comes up with an idea conceived completely out of ignorance and never does the research to discover how dumb the idea is. There is a level of willful narcissism at pkay here. I am willing to bet that she was raised an only child and told everything she thinks and does is great and never had reality slap her back.
@@dragons_red Exactly!
You don't need that much market research to discover that the only way to sell an underpowered console is having a strong and exclusive franchise on it, that's how Nintendo does it and that's why they are aggressively protecting these franchise, because without Mario, Zelda or Super Smash, the Switch is just a gaming smartphone.
That was freaking hilarious she was bragging on stage saying "We are so innovative! There's literally no other console doing what we are doing for example we have integrated a touchpad to our controller, how good is that!" and they were like "What about the PS4?" and she just went "The PS4 has a touchpad?" lol.
I saw an Ouya in a second-hand shop... two weeks before its launch. That sums it up nicely, I think.
So did Ashens which is coincidental
Bwahah that's fucking priceless
@Jack Some place in London.
Alright, Ashens
Pics or it didn't happen. No second hand shop would be dumb enough to buy it
That ceo woman just smelled dishonesty... I can't even start understanding how so many people could believe her...
Well, just look at her job history - she's a PR flinger - she's a CEO adviser - she's good with BUSINESS but what the hell she was doing on the TECH end of things I have NO idea... she's good at getting the monkeys to queue up for banana's - but when it's revealed they're actually PLANTAINS - well, she'll have already fucked off to her next CEO appointment...
Which, is apt, since she now works for PlayBoy as a marketing head for their new VR line :P
@@2Scribble lol apparently now she’s the founder of angel city fc. wtf does she know about sports
she just looked and sounded stupd
Yeah she reminds me of a cult leader or a born again christain
I would put her to jail, on an abandoned island
"you're not gonna find another controller with a touch pad!"
'Sony's controller has a touchpad.'
*Right. They could use it for that*
@@JohnSmith-mk1rj it’s clear to me she didn’t have or do two things. 1) proper and decent market research and 2) Zero experience when it comes…to actual gaming consoles she kept being up the television as if people don’t play video games on PC, their phones/tablets, or portable gaming systems like for example the DS, Gameboy, PSP, PSV, WiiU, and Switch
The Ouya is now officially dead, just in time for Stadia.
Michael H you know what’s funny? So works for stadia
Michael H I meant she works at stadia now
Difference is ouya had only 8 million budget while Google has billions stadia will surelly be a god game
@@yahyaozturk2338 Just because a $billion company is behind it doesn't mean it will get traction. Remember the Zune? Or how about Google Glass?
@@michaelh4227 those were small projects by Google also Google glasses sold enough to profit from it
Lol, Ouya pulled an Epic Games move before the Epic Games move was even a thing
I was just thinking the same thing its like the console equivalent of the EPIC store without the free games.
I had a naive friend who would jump on the bandwagon for every new exciting thing to be announced whether it was a game, console, app, etc. I remember he was the first time I even heard of the Ouya. The way he described it definitely sounded good, almost too good. Almost like it was just another hype scam. Well years passed and I completely forgot about the Ouya until I started seeing videos about it's launch and pretty much instant death.
I haven't seen that friend in years because we both moved to different states, but somehow I highly doubt that he ever bought an Ouya. Or if he did, there's absolutely no way he's still playing it. That also makes me think, is there ANYONE still playing Ouya? Didn't they kill support for it? Can you still buy games on it?
It's dead, no service.
Julie: This console is meant to be hacked
Also Julie: Would you kindly gjve us your credit card info?
I can be wrong but I think what she meant under "hacking" is that the OS was rootable, so you could mess around in it but from a PR point of view the word "hack" is more catchy.
@@EverPaintP Yeah, like the concept of a hacked PSP/smartphone/mini console
@@isabellamorris7902 I know what you mean but on the other hand "hacked stuff" is nearly or a synonym for "free stuff". I think most of the people out there have used hacked windows, downloaded some hacked game from a torrent site or have watched one of the new movies from a site where they didn't need to pay anything just watch a few ads in exchange. These are all "hacks", kinda.
Yeah, you don't want to have a hacked smartphone or...do you?
Actually there are many people out there who love those Android variants that they can "root" / "hack" and install the apps they wouldn't be able to normally. Or there are many others who want to replace their OS with another variant, like any custom android OS (for example: Lineage OS), this wouldn't be possible if the manufacturer dont let them to do (Good examples are the new Samsung phones and tablets where it can be a real pain and you need to be a real expert in some cases to load your custom OS on them and even if you succeed the "KNOX Fuse" detects it and you will never be able to fully convert the phone back to normal and use the KNOX features for example). I think the road they wanted to move on had potential but the execution was rubbish.
Unfortunately, I came across with some people who have mental illness. They don't need to be dangerous or retarded but after some time you feel that there is something wrong with them, so I have experience in spotting them. If you have a look how Julie speaks, acts all her body language. I believe she is one of those people. With somebody like her this project could have never been a success story.
@@EverPaintP @EverPaint I've seen a lot of people hack stuff like those mini consoles (NES mini, PlayStation Classic etc) to put their own ROMs on which is pretty cool.
I have never owned or been interested in owning an Ouya nor do I know anything about its initial CEO - I'm a disinterested party - but I think it's a little unfair to say that a mental health condition caused the console's failure. It's perfectly possible for someone with a mental illness to a) not harm others in any way and b) be perfectly competent and talented. This person made some shitty decisions but I'm not going to diagnose them because of it
*_T E L E V I S I O N_*
Ouya for me was always like: "Oh so you want to have a phone connected to a TV? Well, may I present you with a Google Chrome Cast!" To be honest Chrome Cast is not the best thing ever but it does the same thing as the Ouya does :)
Yeah, in retrospect, I have no real idea what the point of the Ouya was. For customers, it doesn't do anything that a phone/computer/tablet/smart TV/or other set-top box couldn't already do on their own, much less together. For game developers, it was a waste because it was too big a risk supporting a brand new console like that.
@@TripleEye_Josh It's one of this idea you had as a kid and were ignorant like: I only knew popsicle ice existed as a kid and then I told my mom: Wouldn't it be cool if you could eat ice out of a bowl. The next day we bought ice in a bucket :) Most things already exist and the Ouya was the idea of a thing that already exists but people want that same thing because they think it is a good idea. Sorry for my circular and random representation of things but that is basically the Ouya.
@@CarlolucaS to be fair the ouya was announced first if I recall and actually arrived at market earlier in the year
@@mark1A100 Oh, I got you. I just thought the idea was neat but once you start thinking about the idea and who you can sell it to, the product falls apart.
Seems to me that Ouya was more about its business model then it was about making a product people would actually want.
The Elizabeth Holmes of videogames.
"Kickstarter disaster" is practically a redundant phrase
This is why I only back kickstarters for board games.
The most annoying part of ouya for me is when the store shutdown and somewhere around 50 percent of the rpgs I bought stopped working. So I'll never buy digital games over a dollar or two again.
"So long Ouya we bearly knew ya"🤣
I'll sue ya!
One of my colleagues was SO enthusiastic, he was talking about this and even took the console to work, showing me in my office, talking and talking about how great this was, but he stopped very fast, he may have started using it or something
Poor guy just wanted to have a fun time and was excited about it :(
I actually never heard of Ouya, until that fail interview on youtube
I actually had one of these. It had a great selection of couch co-op games, but that damn controller lag killed it for me. It was so flaky it might as well have used IR.
I think it was doomed to fail.
The whole thing is just projecting a android onto a TV
"...lootboxes didn't exist at all yet"
Are people seriously forgetting that Valve implemented Mann Co crates which you need to open with keys that cost 2.49 bucks in TF2 back in 2010? When people say lootboxes, people think of EA and Ubisoft and the likes of them and lose their sht, but when Valve does it, it's somehow completely acceptable. It doesn't matter who does it, it's a scummy business practice.
Its because even back then you could profit off of your man co crate openings. And you could even use what you opened to trade for a higher item. So it wasn't a scam, you could literally make bank.
completely agree with you - it is scummy and changed the face of gaming for the worse if you ask me.....
"The ouya was the hottest thing in the gaming world"
Couldve fooled me cuz I literally never heard of it until this year
How old are you
its hard to know about it when you were on your diapers when it came out
Really? This was almost everywhere in one way or another back in 2012-2013.
Were you maybe too young or in a place where something like this wouldn’t have been shared?
Honestly, why does this not have more views?! Great video btw
Boss Man Because this console did not even happen to a lot of people, but you are right, it is a great video.
because its gay
This is the difference between Hello games' no mans sky and ouya. while one persevered and redeemed themselves to the point they exceeded what they originally promised, while the other one is just gave up.
Fun fact. Hello Games actually released a game on OUYA :)
@@JosephTurcotte117 ... what?
That controller looks so un-ergonomic I got carpal tunnel syndrome now
I feel bad for the pieces of wood that were wasted for developing prototypes of the controller.
The trees didn't get cut down for that bullshit
before clicking on this video i was like “please dont make me watch the interview with julie where she talks about the touchpad on the controller”
We used to play "bomb squad" on the ouya. We never laughed so hard in our lives. It was the only console we could find that game on.
I love bombsquad it makes me and my brother laugh every time we play it
My games don't have "bugs".... they're special features
Coughs *Fallout 76*
Yes and CP2077 is stealing your innovation in game development
@@dragons_red Just wait until TES6, I’ll show everyone what “Innovation” really is. It will make FO76 look 100% polished. Take that CDProjekt Red!
Ouya ceo was soo full of herself in the interviews
CONFIDENT WOMAN BAD
"Ouya we barely knew y'all " 😂😂
And no one is complaining
"Compé, we hardly knew yé"
Maybe I'm just terminally cynical, but I have no idea what anyone saw in this "console".
It was they heyday of kickstarter grifting where people were blinded by their hopes and dreams that entrepreneurs with zero experience or business sense could somehow produce revolutionary products for reasonable prices and thus we could all "stick it to those greedy corporations".
Ignorance is bliss.
I had more fun playing flash games on windows xp on addicting games dotcom than anything I've seen on the ouya.
The Ouya CEO looks like a Mass Effect: Andromeda character
Your research and overall quality to these videos is impressive. Keep up the good work
Great content dude, keep it up! You deserve many more subs!
Great informative video. I've heard of the ouya and its failings but never the "Free the games fund". Really interesting little debacle there.
Damn, this is a really well made video. You need more subs.[`[
Thank you! And I strong agree ;)
Pretty good breakdown. Keep up the good work!
is it really a " console" its a fuckimg raspberry Pi
A raspberry pi can't play Gridiron Thunder though.
"The second most funded gaming crowdfunded project ever next to Star Citizen."
Say what you will about the Ouya, but at least it wasn't a scam like SC.
I feel like this video is simply building to that very last line you said.
Quality video!! Well done :)
I remember when all over the internet they said it will be the future of gaming.
Just came back to my mind. Tough luck for them
Didnt seem like the company had a clue about gaming or technology in general tbh.
This was legitimately just recommended to me. Who are you and why are you so good?
She scares me
Excellent video. Thanks
The OUYA is basically a Raspeberry Pi, with a third party BT controller, based on Android and working like a Chromecast.
Missed opportunity that ya didnt play the Ouya CEO's interviews where she got schooled lol.
Have an Ouya, never plugged it in, just an interesting paperweight of video game history
Very good video. Only strange thing was the "underemphasized" in the script ^^
Always a shame when you see epic fails like this.
I put my Ouya on eBay the very same day that I got it because after 10 minutes with the console I realized that it’s garbage.
this video is fantastic! subbed!
17:03 Bob Squad 🤣🤣 love the image lmao
Is it bad that I never heard of that until now?
I'm not sure if I want the woman who went out and said her product was "nothing special" to be my advisor.
Just stumbled across your content man - loving the diagnostic approach, nice to have the same bigger picture on this dubious little box 👍
None of this would be the same though, without those righteous opinions on the health of gaming....and why it isn't, really make this content an easy watch, Like and sub - many thanks man 🍻
why would i buy a console if i have to upgrade it every once a while like a pc i can already use my tv as a monitor and build a pc centered around it how did this product even sell
wat?
I remember when this was first gaining momentum and being discussed on Slashdot, everyone was making it out to be simply a crowdfunded open console that anyone could develop for without having to get permission from on high. Sounded like a good idea at the time, but not long after, we stopped hearing about it, and it was quickly forgotten.
Besides, Unity and Unreal engines fill that niche, though you may have a small financial outlay at first if you want to do anything commercial with your creations developed with either of them.
I didn't know Leonardo played on the OUYA.
I backed this thing lol. You're welcome for the content.
I find funny that Towerfall is now "that obscure old game made by the same developer of Celeste" since to me for the most time Celeste was literally "a game made by the same guy of Towerfall".
The reference to Triple Town in the business model really dates the console. Dang that was a while ago!!
That woman is just a lying, scamming narcissist. She clearly is not a gamer. She sure likes “television” though
Can't agree more 😀😀
Her goal with the Ouya was to be able to play mobile games on the television. I say she already accomplished that goal cause now we not only had mobile games on PC but also on consoles too like the Xbox, PS4, PS5, Dreamcast, and Switch. Heck even the GTA Trilogy - Definitive Edition were all mobile ports and not remastered of the original PS2 games.
That was a formidable exit, dude.
First time I saw it I, all I thought was "who would want that?"
She is a perfect example as to the importance of Merit hiring.
I remember the entire story happening in front of me. The days of android gingerbread and ice cream sandwich
1GB of Ram. You kidding me?
We are talking about a "console" that was idealized in 2013. 1 GB then was a whole world, especially for android 4.0
@@AlexandruLipan Other then ps4 and xb1 which have 8gb
This crap isn't a console is a mobile phone wannabe console
So long ouya, we barely knew ya.
Thing is, the vast majority of Ouya users didn't buy it to play original games. Most used it to emulate retro games and to watch movies on XBMC (Kodi).
Ouya was the first of what nowadays is known as Android TV devices.
This comment right here wins the internet.
That is all I bought mine for. It was a cheap way to emulate games and watch stuff on XBMC. That is all I ever did with it. I got a few games from the store like Donkey Me and that Ghost N Goblins type game. I did buy one game.... Sonic CD for it.
Another part of the issue is this was really early Kickstarter, before people started learning that maybe you don't throw money at projects that only have mockups and ideas to sell at best. Nothing of the actual system existed when the KS started and they only really started on the the R&D from the point they got the KS money. Considering other similar systems that also did the crowdfund route would then end up in years of development hell, it's a minor miracle the Ouya went from concept to launch in a year.
Also a fair note - at the time of Ouya's KS, I think it's fair to say almost all 3 console makers were in a situation where they were moving away from more indie friendly strategies. The Xbox indie program was mostly at an end, Sony were not really engaging the indie market, and Nintendo were busy dealing with Wii U. The downside is that the Ouya woke the giants up to this gap in the market so that by the time the system was near ready - most of them had indie outreach efforts at least in the works and meant a lot of promising projects no longer really needed KS/Indiegogo ect.
There were also some other PR winners from the time Ouya actually had a marketing team. One of their ads was literally an animated cartoon of a guy bemoaning that he had spent $60 on a video game to the point of vomiting his guts and spine out and then promptly beating himself to a bloody pulp with it. On another occasion - the twitter account posted "yeah! get in!" to the announcement that Ouya was funding "That Dragon, Cancer" - which was a very serious autobiographical game about the devs very young child dying of cancer...
"Loot boxes didn't exist at all yet "
Laughs in team fortress 2
That subtle The Office joke tho, priceless
I never understood what the point of the Ouya was, because I own a PC.
I still can't believe she held up the console and went "there is nothing special about this". Who thinks that line will sell products?
7:52 holy shit the little crane that could. I loved that game on my phone.
All I coud think of when you said "Bing Gordon" was "Bing Chilling"
could’ve just been ahead of it’s time, it may have done a little better nowadays but is never gonna out due ps5, Xbox, & the switch
nice vid. you got a sub
"Lootboxes didn't exist at all yet"
Man, those were the days, when I still thought Skylanders and Disney Infinity were the lowest depths to which post-purchase game monetization could sink.
It's funny I still want one for my shelf
I just never understood why people wanted such a thing. It’s just an android phone with the portability of a console.
The only way to push into the market with a new console is to be prepared to lose money. A LOT of money. That's the gambit every 1st party (not just console 1st parties - see the Epic store, for example) is playing and for good reason: it just doesn't work any other way. Ouya, aside from the questionable premise, had the right idea: throw money at the problem until it eventually goes away. The issue: you need more than a few million dollars for that. In fact, you'd need hundreds of millions to even compete, possibly even more if you're trying to establish a new brand. In the end, Ouya tried to go to the moon with a faulty rocket and not enough fuel to even make it off the ramp. And honestly, everyone in the industry with a modicum of thinking capacity saw that coming a mile away.
This is the first time I've seen someone make the comparison between the Ouya and the Epic Games Store, and you're absolutely spot on.
I always love the idea of consoles like the OUYA but I'm always disappointed with the realization.
ouya would have benn good, if you could build an arcade cabinet easily around it.
Towerfall!! 👍🏻Nice !😎 0:25
As much a failure that Ouya was, its existence had made it a bit easier for small indie developers to get into the console market without having to be a company/organization with a secure office space or complex.
Microsoft for example, announced ID@Xbox some months after Ouyas release, and also gave the retail Xbox One and Series X/S consoles the ability to switch states between retail and developer mode, rather than having a separate, more expensive, $2k to $10k developer kit.
My PC/Switch controller is a re-purposed ouya controller. It's a fine controller.
Ah good times I use to want one of these
The OUYA is the console equivalent of the EPIC games store minus the free games
3:15
The issue is that every single person today has a phone and likely a tablet as well and most mobile games play better on mobile because that's what they were designed for.
Ouya just wasn't a big enough jump over playing games on tablet to really justify it for people. Compared to something like a PS4 which has a ton of games not on mobile and of a fidelity leagues beyond mobile games.
"How to piss money away and people off - Starring Razer and Boxer 8"
Never seen one in person in any store. It's a mythical pokemon
This is Sad for People who Loved Ouya, Razer was discontinued ouya in 2015, because of haters, Controllers issues, Failed Console, now they finally discontinued the service of ouya by Razer, if you have ouya but you don't have games, Your Console will be Brick Console.
I doubt that "haters" had anything to do with Razer's decision to discontinue the Ouya. If there was a market for it and it was a good enough console, it would have survived. Other (better) consoles have haters too, but you don't see their manufacturers cancelling their systems because of "haters". Saying that it got cancelled because of haters is such a dumb argument to make, when the system originally surpassed its funding goal on Kickstarter.
@ 18:23 I hope you're not a Rocket Surgeon... You'll be the first 🤣🤣
Well. My OUYA still works. I have it set up where it loads into XBMC (Kodi) from boot and I have all the emulators they had from the Ouya store on it. That is all I ever used it for to begin with so I didn't loose much. I bought it cheap for $30 and just used it for emulation. I have a old PS3 controller synced to it (the original PS3 six axis that came out before the Dual Shock 3).
my controllers dead so one day i'll try replacing the guts for a raspberry pi and still keep that stylish case
WHen you said "McDonald said" I expected an "E I E I O"
Anyone know the game name at 19:01? Been trying to find it for ages!
Elliot Quest?
Upvote for the "can't download a car" comment. That takes me back! lol