What a week. While continuing to work on making OUYA, and of course now managing our Kickstarter, we’ve received thousands of excited comments, pointed questions, and lots of encouragement. Thank you to our 35,418 backers. Conversations with you have been great—bringing out the best product we can bring.
A few things to share:
On the product side...
We spent yesterday with nVidia talking about our chips. The team is great and their support has been incredible. They’re working side by side with us, and they’ll help us maximize the performance of the Tegra 3 chipset we’re using.
We’ve been hearing your questions on everything from how you’ll discover games on OUYA (we’re focused on both discovery and curation), to whether we’ll have different symbols on the buttons for the color-blind (yes, we’ll need to address that), and whether or not we’ll have an Ethernet port (stay tuned on that), and much more. Feedback on our work in progress is one of the great things about Kickstarter. Keep sending your ideas and voicing your opinions—they matter to us.
Games! Today Meteor, the maker of Hawken (a great-looking upcoming free-to-play mech game), just pledged that they’re also in on OUYA. We’re really honored to have great gamemakers supporting OUYA. Thank you so much to the developers who reached out, we’re trying our best to be in touch with you -- we know we still owe a lot of you responses.
@markvlong -- #ouya A crowd sourced, open, indie, free to play console?! Count Meteor in!
And you game developers..
We know, we ran out of the developer rewards (it happened faster than expected!). We’ve assessed our ability to deliver and have refreshed both tiers of developer awards.
And we had a crazy idea—if folks are interested—we might consider a reward that would allow devs to start working from the raw circuit board at an even earlier date, allowing them to get a head start on development. And maybe we’d add one more level that gives you just the software—no early console. Tell us what you think
(Obviously, if you have the Android SDK, you know most of what you need to know -- we’ll just need to add in a few elements specific to OUYA—things like assets for promoting on the console and our payments API.)
So, there you have it, an update! Some games jumping on board, the scoop on the progress we’ve made with the product, and more rewards for developers. This is an early-stage project here, and we know we’ve got a lot to do. We are so grateful to have your support and we will do everything we can to thrill you with the results.
Back to work...
Thanks!
Julie
Zuletzt geändert von Overdose am 10 Aug 2012 08:30, insgesamt 3-mal geändert.
Day 1 pledger, 1. Batch vo de 99$-Ouyas, plus e Controller.
Hoffe ufne Ethernet-Aaschluss.
Dr Typ bi Engadget, so chäsig dä Seich zum Teil isch uf dere Plattform, hett das für mi guet zämegfasst:
[Werum dass er pledged hett]primarily because I'm ready for something new, something different, and something that is totally gimmick-free
im kickstarter topic hend es paar posted wo scho pledged hend.
me muess sich eifach bewusst sie, dass s'gäld im ungünschtigschte fall wäg isch und me nüd drfür überchunt. au wenn in de kickstarter agb öbbis drzue stoht was passiert wenn de starter sis verspräche nid chan iilöse. kei ahnig wie das in de realität denn usgseht. hoffe mrs nid.
So it’s time for us to reveal our secret weapon, someone who has been working with us tirelessly behind the scenes to bring OUYA to life, and today we’re pulling back the curtain.
Meet Muffi Ghadiali from our team, who is in charge of making the OUYA product, hardware and software.
Muffi joined OUYA from Lab126, a part of Amazon, where he worked on the Kindle line of products.
I thought it would be best if you heard directly from him, so he wrote to you...
___
Kickstarters!
I’m Muffi, and I want to tell you a little bit about what we’re working on at OUYA.
I came out of Lab126’s product team where I worked on the Kindle line -- hardware and software. I worked every day with engineering, product design, industrial design, operations, supply chain, and QA teams.
I joined OUYA because I saw--early on--the potential for an open technology to change how gaming works. Gamers are unique. They are sophisticated and they follow products from the first idea all the way to market. For a product guy like me, that's exciting. We're getting a lot of feedback, great support and lots of questions. Sometimes those are tough questions but they keep me at the top of my game. It's pretty cool that Kickstarter facilitates a direct dialogue with future users.
My job at OUYA is to ensure that we meet the needs of gamers and developers.
In short, I’m here to deliver OUYA.
I know from experience that this can be done:
■ I’ve built consumer technology products for more than 15 years--both hardware and software. I’ve worked on set-top boxes, media streaming devices, handheld devices, content services, and other big consumer products.
■ I’ve been playing a key role in designing the path that will take OUYA to market, from technology to production.
■ And while it may seem aggressive, the technology here is actually fairly standard. We’re not building a hovercraft or a nano-bot.
■ If you look online at the teardowns of other devices with some of the same components, you’ll see that our device can be built for well under $99.
■ What IS innovative is the beautiful design from Yves Behar, and our model for working with game developers. From my perspective, I’m tackling the easy part.
So here’s what we’re doing now...
■ Developers, we’re working to get an SDK in your hands as fast as we can, please be patient. It will be pretty simple to start, using the existing Android SDK and adding the ability to promote your game, and to charge OUYA customers. We’ll add to it as we go.
■ We’re getting our ducks in a row on the hardware production. NVIDIA is helping us with production designs, and selecting the right device manufacturer. We’re in talks with a few manufacturers. I was just playing with our circuit board yesterday.
■NVIDIA is also helping us maximize the performance of our Tegra 3 chips -- they’ll work even better than the demos you see online. We’ll be able to support some intense games.
And we heard your feedback: yes, yes, we’ll add an Ethernet jack. We have a lot of consoles to make, so I wouldn’t expect too many more changes to the spec.
Please keep sending your comments. We are doing everything to deliver for you.
Thanks!
Muffi
___
Again, thank you to the almost 40,000 of you (!!) who are backing OUYA -- we can’t wait to get it in your hands.
Julie
P.S. Muffi is also hiring some engineers to join our team. So if you know the Android OS well, and want to help us make OUYA, hit us up. (We bet you can figure out a way to get in touch with him...)
We’d like to introduce you to Robert Bowling, president of the game developer Robotoki, and an early backer of our Kickstarter. You might recognize Robert from his work with the Call of Duty franchise.
Earlier today, from his Twitter account (@fourzerotwo), Robert hinted that he had some news.
Well here it is: OUYA gamers will get FIRST access to the ravaged world of his post-zombie-apocalyptic game, Human Element.
Robotoki is the first studio to commit to building a game exclusively for OUYA: an episodic prequel that will set the stage for his eventual release of Human Element in 2015.
Welcome to OUYA, Robert!
Julie
Check out Robert's exclusive OUYA - Human Element video and photo below!
