By Chris Kavan - 04/17/13 at 02:40 PM CT
For those who have been keeping up with the blogs here on MeltedJoystick (and we thank those intrepid souls who have), you may remember that back in July of 2012, fellow blogger Nelson wrote about the recently-announced Ouya - an ambitious Android-based console. Well, flash forward to today and we know a lot more about the Ouya and things are off to a shaky start.
As reported by such sites as CNET, theverge and techradar everything from controller design to game selection has been questioned. Of course the Ouya team fired back quickly essentially saying this earlier copy was not supposed to be for review and that all issues would be addressed before the official June 06, 2012 debut.
But one has to wonder at even $99 whether the Ouya will be able to grab a piece of the market. More recently is was revealed the console is a bit slow when compared to modern Android devices ranging from cell phones to tablets. If your Android device is already better than Ouya, what's the point of owning one other to see just how terrible Android games look on a massive HD TV (granted, you can do that with a lot of games already).
Ouya is going to be sending out true review units in May in preparation of the June release. However, in one month, will things really be all that different? The idea was sound (as evident by the huge kickstarter numbers) but it's looking more and more like the product will have a very hard time living up to expectations. I'll take a wait-and-see approach, buy my excitement over this potentially game-changing console has been tempered rather quickly.
Comments
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/20/13 at 01:27 PM CT
Why buy an Ouya for $99 when you can buy a subsidized smartphone for $99... then pay $1000 in monthly fees over the life of the phone's contract? Not to mention the fact that phones don't come with controllers.
I still want to give Ouya the benefit of the doubt. So what if it turns out to be a box that doesn't do anything besides play "Final Fantasy Dimensions"?
