Geek Bravado

The blown hard arrogance of Parallax Abstraction.

Monthly Archives: July 2012

Please help some good people in desperate need

Leave a Comment Posted by on July 31, 2012

This is “out of character” for this blog but it’s for a good cause so bear with me. I have a couple of online friends named Zach and Hillary. They’re both in their early twenties, making do with the barest essentials and are among the nicest people I knew. I’ve never met either of them in real life (something I hope to change soon) but they are both wonderful and are textbook examples of how this world often has no heart and screws over good people repeatedly for no good reason. I’ve no intention of spilling their personal lives here but suffice it to say, I’m a guy who has dealt with a lot of bad luck and been screwed over in many severe and unfair ways over the years and what I’ve endured can barely hold a candle to the life that these two have had to live over the last couple of years. Despite it all, they continue to push forward.

As of today, their struggle got a lot harder. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they are now in danger of losing the home they are living in. They already lost one home before and moved to this one to keep a roof over their heads. It was supposed to be temporary and has become anything but and now they are at risk of losing that too. In the cruellest of fate twists, shortly after finding that out, Zach’s son (who Hillary is the de facto step Mom of) has been essentially kidnapped. He was sent on what was supposed to be a month long trip to visit his “real” Mom and now she is refusing to send him back, something she has apparently done before. They are looking into options but there is a chance they in addition to saving their home, they may also need to hire a lawyer to fight to get their son back.

I wish I could say that this was some kind of sick joke but it isn’t. It’s happening right now to some people who couldn’t possibly be less deserving of it. I spend a lot of time on this blog bitching about the games industry, Apple fanboys and Auzentech but now I am using it to make a plea for your help in getting these good, honest people out of a monumental bind. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you know nothing of them or their plight. I totally understand not wanting to put money towards an unknown cause but dear reader, if you have come to trust me at all from my writings to date, trust me when I say that this is honest and Zach and Hillary deserve and need your help. I do not lend my name to things I don’t believe in, I believe in this. If you have the means, please consider supporting them via their ChipIn page. Unfortunately, WordPress won’t let me embed it in this post. You’ll be doing something good and directly supporting people who are in a bad situation for no other reason than sometimes the world is awful to those who just don’t deserve it. I hope that some of my money and this post will help them in some way to achieving the better life that they’ve already earned twice over as far as I’m concerned. Please consider giving what you can. Thank you.

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Don’t ever buy a product from Auzentech

Leave a Comment Posted by on July 27, 2012

Bad customer service is the rule and not the exception today. I’m a victim of it every day both personally and in my job as is most everyone else and like those people, most of the time I just have to suck it up and accept it as the way things are. However, my recent experiences with boutique manufacturer of sound cards (and other things) Auzentech Inc. has been so incredibly, mind-boggingly awful that I had to write something about it not only to vent but as a warning to anyone else who is planning to give this awful company any of their money.

I built a new gaming PC a little under a year ago. I use a good headset and discovered quickly that the mainboard’s built-in audio didn’t have enough power to properly drive it. I tried out a mid-line Asus sound card and wasn’t terribly pleased either but then found out about the Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1. This card uses Creative Technology’s well regarded X-Fi chip but has much better amps on it. It was well regarded both in reviews and on forums so I went for one at a cost of almost $150 after taxes. Until recently, I couldn’t have been happier. The sound quality was fantastic and it had all the features I wanted.

Then a couple of months ago, I started running into a problem where after extended play sessions, the sound would get very staticy, like you were listening to a radio that was out of tune. I did some poking around and discovered this to be a common and known problem with the Forte 7.1. The built-in heat sink is not good enough and it can sometimes overheat. This problem has worsened over time. In addition, the latest drivers made available from Auzentech’s web site will not install because they say the installation CD isn’t inserted (putting in the one that comes in the box doesn’t help). Several people said Auzentech has fixed the static issue with a new hardware revision and that setting up an RMA to get my Forte 7.1 replaced would solve everything. I’m never pleased with having to pay shipping to get someone else’s screw-up fixed but such is life. I created a ticket on Auzentech’s web site and waited for my RMA number.

That was six weeks ago and counting. No acknowledgement, no response, no replacement card. I have about a month left on the warranty and the time gets shorter every day.

I started looking around some more and discovered that many people going back as far as 2008 have had problems with Auzentech taking weeks to answer tickets and in some cases, never answering them at all. Apparently in their minds, actively selling premium products with a legal warranty doesn’t mean they have any obligation to honour said warranty. As usual, the useless tech press never mentioned this in any reviews of the product (save one from HardOCP that I missed originally), despite it being well known among users. The consensus I found was that Auzentech products are great when they work and don’t break often but when they do, you’re basically screwed. Not in my world, thank you very much.

Since the second week went by with no response, I’ve been on a quest to get a hold of someone, anyone from this company and get the replacement I am legally and morally entitled to. This has been neither easy nor fruitful thus far. Auzentech does not offer phone support and the only US phone number on their web site is a voice-mail only line. I’ve left multiple messages, none of which have been returned. I have not yet incurred the expensive to call the South Korea office but I don’t imagine I’ll get anywhere there either. I tried to join their forums but new accounts have to be manually approved by a moderator and mine never was. I did manage to discover e-mail addresses for their RMA department the company President Stephane Bae but so far, those have gone unreturned as well. I’ve tried to dig up more on this guy but other than finding out he once worked in marketing for another company that was at the same address until around the time Auzentech started, there’s not much out there. All of this has the feeling of a company that’s gone out of business but their phone number still works, their products are still being actively sold in stores and online and just this month, they made a news posting on their web site about migrating to a new server. They’re clearly still around, they just seem totally uninterested in honouring their warranties.

I’m not sure what to do from here. I’ve submitted this story to The Consumerist twice and been ignored (likely because this isn’t a big company they can publicly shame). From what I can tell, there is no real legal recourse I have for this other than suing which obviously isn’t fiscally practical for an issue like this. I’m considering replacing the card with another Asus model that’s in the same ballpark but it’s over $200 to do that and I won’t recover much of it by selling my Forte 7.1, which I would have to do at a steep discount because of its issues. I’ve asked the place where I bought the card if they have a different support channel but have gotten no response there either. It truly appears that there’s nothing I can do at this point, something I’m quite certain Auzentech is aware of. If anyone knows of anything else I may have missed to try to find out more information about the company or how to contact their employees, please feel free to leave a comment or let me know over Twitter.

I’ll post more about this saga if anything further develops but needless to say, I don’t think anyone should give this scumbag, fraud practising company a dime. If you are in the market for a sound card or anything else Auzentech sells, run, don’t walk away with your money. Don’t believe the useless tech press reviews, this is a company that knowingly sells products with design flaws and seems completely unconcerned with honouring the legally binding warranties they include with them. Whatever their reasons are for this, I don’t care. You took my money, you have an obligation to support your customers and if you can’t, you should stop selling products to them. I’m hoping this public shaming will cause someone at this company to crawl out from under a rock and provide me some kind of help but I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE: I got fed up with the continuing issues and after some research, decided to pick up an Asus Xonar DGX because I couldn’t justify the expense for the higher end ROG Xonar Phoebus. Ever since, I’ve been kicking myself for not buying one of these back when I built this PC. It cost about 1/3 as much, the drivers while not as elegant as Creative’s, do still offer a ton of customisation options (including a manual maximum volume cap which I’ve wanted and the Creative drivers couldn’t do) and the sound quality through my Razer Carcharias headset is fantastic. Beyond that, I have actually noticed a noticeable improvement in both my frame rate when gaming and my overall system stability. I used to get occasional blue screens (especially when resuming from sleep) that I blamed on my overclock and my monitors would also refuse to sleep because the system kept thinking an audio stream was open, even when there was nothing playing. Both problems have vanished with the Xonar DGX, meaning there was more wrong with the Forte than I even realised. I’m going to continue fighting to get this card replaced and if I can, I’ll be selling the replacement and sticking with the Xonar DGX. An Auzentech product will never go near a system I own again.

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Gabe Newell says a lot of things

2 Comments Posted by on July 26, 2012

I think Valve are awesome. They make great games, Steam while not perfect by any means is still a fantastic digital distribution platform and they have a corporate culture I would do morally questionable things to be able to work in. I would argue that no one company has done more to advance and evangelise the ideas and strengths of PC gaming than this company.  Their founder and “leader” (you can’t really call him that within their structure) Gabe Newell is an incredible genius and business driver who I would place on a podium right beside the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I would consider it the thrill of a lifetime to be able to meet and talk with him for even five minutes.

He also likes to make waves in the press and has once again by commenting that the upcoming Windows 8 is “a catastrophe” and that it is,  among other reasons, why Valve is beginning to heavily invest in Linux. This originally came from AllThingsD which is to Apple what Fox News is to Republicans so it’s possible the context of his quote is being twisted but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was true. Now, I’ve not yet written about Windows 8 because I haven’t used it enough to form a full opinion but I have my worries about its radical changes as many others do. These changes are significant but I would hardly call it a “catastrophe”, especially since everything that’s great about Windows 7 is still there and not going away any time soon. Nonetheless, when someone with the knowledge and clout of Gabe Newell speaks, people listen. As well they should.

Before the fanboy press uses this as a reason to point at Microsoft and go “SEE! We were right!” (they’re already doing that anyway), I think it is important to also consider Newell’s history with strongly worded comments like this and how his company’s view has often not followed through on them. Back in 2005, Newell commented that the Xbox 360 “makes his life a lot worse” because of justified gripes like the optional hard drive. He’s also recently railed against Microsoft’s ridiculous certification process and insistence on charging for all DLC, both of which I also agree with. Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped them from releasing all their recent titles on it to very healthy sales. He also called the PlayStation 3 a “total disaster” but ended up embracing the platform to an even greater extent by putting a version of Steam on it with Portal 2 and taking PS3 development internal after EA buggered up its version of The Orange Box.

I don’t consider him a hypocrite for these statements really. That Valve ended up supporting both systems isn’t an indication that his feelings weren’t genuine or that his gripes weren’t real, just that they had the talent to overcome them. Still, that he seemingly comes out against something publicly doesn’t mean that Valve won’t support it and in the end, possibly end up liking it. Newell likes to speak his mind, something I’ve said I think more people in this industry need to do. I think he intentionally makes these bold statements about new platforms yet to come out because he knows people listen to him and he wants to see people both inside and outside of Valve take it as a challenge and rise to the occasion. He knows this stuff will get quoted and if there’s one thing about Gabe Newell I’m sure of, it’s that he never says anything without a lot of thought having gone into it.

Personally, I still don’t think Linux will ever gain major desktop or gaming adoption. There’s too many editions with inconsistent features, not enough hardware support, it’s a technical support nightmare and while it’s an incredibly powerful and flexible platform, it’s still built first and foremost by engineers. Even after using editions built for more “mainstream” users like Ubuntu, I still don’t feel they fully understand ease of use and there’s still too much elitism within its community. That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to see it gain traction (especially given it’s wide open nature) and if anyone can make it happen, it’s Valve. I eagerly await the chance to try out Steam and Source Engine games on a Linux drive at some point soon.

I do wonder if Newell is less worried about the major interface changes in Windows 8 and more about the fact that it comes with a built-in store that could compete with Steam, something I’m not big on either. Microsoft hasn’t yet been able to do a digital store elegantly (especially on PC) but I think more competition is always better. I would love to be able to hear him speak on this subject in greater detail and hear how his experiences with it differ from mine. I’m hoping to get to spend enough time with it to be able to write up my own impressions soon.

What Gabe Newell said was important and should be talked about but as fanboys chalk this up as another reason why Microsoft, Windows and PCs will be dead in a few years, I think it’s important to remember his history of saying such controversial things and what’s really ended up coming out of those statements. He’s a brilliant man and part of a brilliant company but one of its many strengths lies in that they tend to find slick ways to embrace, rather than ignore the things they’ve talked down about. Despite what he’s said, I’m guessing we’ll see Steam playing very nicely with Metro and if Valve’s really smart (and they are), quickly getting a version of it made for Windows 8 tablets as well and putting their flag down in a whole other market. I very much look forward to what they do in the future but Valve is still one company in an industry and I think people shouldn’t take Newell’s carefully planned statements as die hard gospel.

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Meet the new hotness, same as the old hotness

4 Comments Posted by on July 24, 2012

Remember when pretty much everyone in the games press and a good chunk of the industry said PC gaming was dead? Man, that seems like it happened so recently. That’s probably because it did. Only a year or two ago, you couldn’t look at a non-PC enthusiast site without seeing almost everyone condemning the platform as corpsified and one that would always play second fiddle to consoles in the home, saddled with half-assed ports of games that were designed for controllers and 720p first. Even with the huge rise of mobile and indie development, everyone said there just wasn’t a case for gaming on computers anymore. The usual bevy of nonsense excuses was offered: Piracy’s out of control! A computer than can run games is too expensive! PC gaming’s too complicated!

Then some time in 2011, the sentiment almost universally shifted and in the last couple of months, this seems to be the increasingly common viewpoint.

As a life-long PC gamer first and someone who also supports computers for a living, I’ve always thought similarly to Jim Sterling. I’ve owned every console since the PS2 and have a huge library of console games. I don’t dislike consoles at all, far from it. However, especially in recent years, the continued excuses I hear about why PC gaming can never be mainstream I always believed to be crap. Piracy is a huge problem on every platform from Xbox 360 to iOS, it’s just whined about more on PC. Virtually any computer you buy now can run games to some degree and even something as low as $500 can run AAA stuff decently if you don’t care about having all the settings maxed. Most reasonably equipped PCs can easily be plugged into a TV if you want to game on the couch and almost every new game has native controller support. And with the lessening frequency of driver updates and well as drivers, games and operating systems that keep themselves current automatically, it’s never been easier to be a PC gamer. I could sit my girlfriend or my Mom down with a new PC with Steam on it, say “Buy, install and play something.” and neither of them would have any harder a time doing that than they would putting a game into a console. Sterling also touches on how digital distribution means the actual games are almost always cheaper now as well. The standby excuses no longer apply and are just that, excuses.

Meanwhile, consoles have paid online services that are free on PC. Patching also became possible this generation which has given rise to the “release now, patch later” mentality that the absence of used to be their greatest strength. This is backed up with manufacturer “certification processes” that are supposed to ensure you get quality in the box. However, especially of late, we’ve heard many developers (especially smaller indies) complaining about how bureaucratic and slow they are and how more and more are finding the process not worth it. Even with this, we still get numerous games like say, every Bethesda release that are often barely playable at launch or the strange and continuing problem of most Xbox Live Arcade titles shipping broken online play. When you combine this with both Microsoft and Sony making games more and more secondary and trying to turn their machines into all-in-one living room devices, I think Sterling’s bang on when he says that consoles are simply becoming closed, less powerful and increasingly less friendly PCs.

Most indie developers have said that they both endured fewer headaches and made more money by releasing to Steam on PC or even the App Store than on any console service. Services like that allow you to create and release a game entirely on your own whereas Xbox Live Arcade requires that you have a publisher who cuts into your profits. Then there’s retail games where self-publishing hasn’t been a realistic option for over a decade. You can patch and update your game with ease and as often as you want on PC without penalty and contrary to the console certification philosophy, PC games that are broken at launch are no more or less common. In other words, PC not only has by far the largest number of potential players in the world, it’s the easiest platform to develop and maintain your game for.

Here’s the thing though: That’s been the case on PC for the better part of a decade now and it was the case throughout most of this time when people declared PC gaming dead. What amazes me is not only that the pendulum has swung back but that it’s done so with such speed that the pendulum’s practically warped by the G-force. The PC always does get a bit of a resurgence as a console cycle ends and given that this cycle has gone on way too long, a certain amount of that is expected. This time seems different though, with many developers big and small now speaking out against how frustrating the consoles are to work with and how many who have previously released on them aren’t going to bother anymore. Many say that between PC and mobile platforms, consoles are increasingly becoming irrelevant and that the next generation may be the last of them, at least in their current form. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that PC and mobile are raising the bar of value expectations both from developers and consumers and if the consoles want to continue to have the great success they’ve attained, the large companies in charge of them need to stop slogging through the mud and learn to be agile and less controlling.

What I’ve really learned throughout watching this huge and sudden paradigm shift is just how increasingly irrelevant and frankly useless the enthusiast press is becoming. The same people who were declaring the PC dead with certainty only a couple of years ago are now cheering it as the killer of consoles. These are the same people who said the DS and Wii were gimmicky and would never take off and that people would never want to play games on a mobile phone and that PC gaming was always going to be a niche for wealthy nerds. PC gaming never went anywhere and was never close to dead but people believed it because the enthusiast press said so. I’ve come to realise in recent months that the segment is really just an inter-feeding echo chamber based on opinions people pull out of thin air without any real empirical evidence. Time and time again, the enthusiast press proves itself to be pretty useless at understanding trends and what consumers actually want, only at taking wild guesses and stating them as fact. It frustrates me to see their word so often taken as law among gamers, even when it constantly flip-flops and is proven wrong by others who remain ignored. I don’t know how one goes about fixing this problem but I’ve been granularly moving further and further away from this segment of game coverage in the last couple of years and I think if they aren’t careful, a lot of other people are going to as well. If when the next Xbox and PlayStation come out, we start seeing coverage once again swinging back to the PC being irrelevant, I think perhaps it’s their own relevance they should check.

I’ve always been a PC gamer first and will continue to be, even though I will likely be all three new consoles when they arrive. I do wonder what the future is going to hold in this regard but the important thing to remember is that throughout the entire history of gaming (including one major crash), playing games on computers has always endured and grown, no matter what has happened to every other segment. I think consoles are important for growing the gaming audience but if the future is in fact one where open, expandable, decentralised platforms can once again be dominant, I think that’s ultimately good for everyone. Regardless of where you choose to do your gaming, make sure you make your choice because it’s where you prefer to be, not because it’s where the increasingly irrelevant press tells you to be.

Business, Computers, Coverage, Predictions, Technology, Video Games , , , , ,

In the interests of disclosure: I’ve downgraded my OUYA pledge for unrelated reasons

1 Comment Posted by on July 17, 2012

Not being a journalist, this is not actually required of me but since I’ve been sticking up for the OUYA project against what I feel is some undeserved and hypocritical cynicism, I feel it’s important to be honest about this.

I’ve downgraded from the $95 OUYA Kickstarter tier to the $10 tier that just allows me to reserve a name on their service as opposed to a hardware pre-order.

The reason for this is simple: That money was needed elsewhere. The CPU cooling system on my PC has been acting up lately and as I run my system overclocked, I needed to spend a good chunk of change on a better replacement solution for that. I’m also faced with the prospect of having to buy a new sound card soon due to the horrible, non-existent customer service I’m receiving from my current failing card’s manufacturer (more on that in another post). As my PC is currently my primary gaming platform, I want to make sure it’s running the best way possible and I wasn’t able to financially justify both that and my OUYA pledge in the same month.

I won’t lie, some of the coverage and the continuing non-answers from OUYA’s creators are causing me to raise some doubting eyebrows but rest assured, had this situation with my PC not arisen, I’d have kept my pledge where it was. I still think OUYA’s a great idea and has the potential to do great things and since I’m fully aware of the risks of support any Kickstarter project, I felt it was worth the risk. I’m certain there are at least a couple of projects out of the 22 I’ve backed that are either not going to make it to completion or be awful when they ship but them’s the breaks. Don’t play the Kickstarter game if you expect to win every time. I think OUYA is a worthwhile to back if it interests you but if it doesn’t grab you or you aren’t certain about what they’re showing, I totally get that too.

Some people will probably think this is a thinly-veiled excuse for me to slink away from the project because I’ve lost confidence in it. If you think that, I’m not going to waste my time convincing you otherwise. I know the truth and that’s all that matters. I might get lucky and pick up some extra freelance computer service work this month and if I do, I’ll be putting my money back in. If not, I look forward to picking one of these up at launch.

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Some doubt OUYA but I’m staying in for now

10 Comments Posted by on July 12, 2012

The OUYA Kickstarter I blogged about yesterday has been a runaway success and has now crossed over $4,000,000. I expressed some concerns in that post about how they’ve confused their message but since then, a larger group of critics have come out with counterpoints. The best written and most comprehensive of these so far is this report that Ben Kuchera did over at Penny Arcade Report. I think he makes a few points that are worth considering if you’re still on the fence about whether this is worth chipping into or not. However, I don’t agree with everything he’s written and I do think his position as a pretty unabashed Apple nut is colouring his statements a bit.

First, let’s talk about where he’s very much right. One of the negatives I addressed in my last post was on how they’ve done a poor job creating a message for this and on that, he appears to agree. They quote several well known indie developers as supporting the system but none of them have yet to announce any projects for the OUYA, including some of those in the pitch video like Brian Fargo. He has said that right now, they have no plans to bring their own Kickstarted project Wasteland 2 to OUYA. Though to be fair, they have never announced support for anything but the PC yet. They also misuse the term “free-to-play” by including things like demos under that moniker which I think we’d all agree is misleading at best. These things need clarification and fast.

He’s also correct in his statement that Android developers aren’t going to put extra time and money into making versions of their games that work with a controller unless this thing gets a good install base. However, being a new product and a new idea, this is always going to be the case. Android never would have become a thing at all if everyone assumed it would fail because it had no developer support out of the gate. This is a new concept and it’s the job of OUYA’s creators to sell it and create that install base. Maybe they’ll succeed, maybe they won’t but trying something new to see if it catches on is the whole point of entrepreneurship. Focusing on only guaranteed ideas is why the AAA industry is such a mess right now.

Where he makes what I believe are unfair leaps are in his criticisms that because this is an Android powered platform where hacking is being encouraged, that it will somehow automatically become a bastion for piracy and will scare developers away. Sure, piracy is a problem on Android. Guess what? It’s a problem everywhere else too. If you jailbreak an iPhone, you can put pirated content on it. Apple and their fanbase don’t like to talk about it but lots of people do that. All the current home consoles have easy piracy vectors available to them as well. The most current dedicated handhelds don’t but that’s probably only because neither has been a sales blockbuster yet. And obviously, there has always been rampant PC piracy. You make any platform that’s popular and scumbag thieves will find a way to break it open and give themselves free stuff they don’t deserve. By making OUYA hackable, its creators are acknowledging this and embracing it, even encouraging people to do new and interesting things with their box. They know that they will have to find a way to keep people out of their “official” ecosystem if they hack the box and I’m sure that’s in the works. Nearly every mobile app and game release now is coming out on both iOS and Android simultaneously so developers don’t seem to be scared away by the platform’s apparently rampant piracy problem. Why will they suddenly be scared by it on OUYA which is arguably just another Android entry point, one that also doesn’t tie people to a single point of purchase like Apple?

He also quotes indie developer Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games who says one of the big problems with open platforms like Android is that the market quickly becomes flooded with ripoffs and garbage that diminish chances for indie success. This is another thing that’s as big if not a bigger problem on the supposedly curated Apple App Store but somehow that doesn’t count I guess? It’s also something that hasn’t stopped a huge flood of new indie titles on the PC side of things, a platform that was considered the “wild west” for years and on which many indies (including himself) have met with huge success. What makes Android somehow different then all these other platforms?

What I really don’t like about his report is how it purports that this is selling a dream instead of a reality and the ridiculous comparisons he also makes to the Phantom console, a device that I will say again, was a scam run by a known scammer instead of having people behind it who have shipped real things. If you are developing something and already have it at a shippable state, then you were already able to fund it and Kickstarter isn’t necessary. The way Kickstarter works (and they’re very clear about this) is that pitching in to projects is no guarantee that anything will end up being made. Of course you’re buying into a dream and not reality because Kickstarting it is how you make it a reality! Last I checked, the Pebble watch, Wasteland 2 and Double Fine Adventure aren’t any kind of reality either. I mean, does this really need to be clarified at this point? I don’t know if Kuchera fully understands the purpose of Kickstarter when he makes statements like that, especially given how many other projects he’s promoted.

From what I’ve read of Kuchera’s work (which I generally like very much), he’s tends to be dismissive of any mobile initiatives that aren’t iOS and I think that comes through in his story. I don’t think there’s cause to be as down on the project as he is and all but outright calling it a scam at this stage with no real evidence is uncalled for. I’m nevertheless writing this and linking to it because he does make salient points and explains them better than I could have. The great thing about Kickstarter is that anyone who contributes can change or remove their contribution until the project’s funding deadline. I’m keeping my $95 buy-in for now but I do hope that OUYA’s creators will come out to clarify some of the ambiguous statements in their marketing and based on the campaign’s incredible success so far, will be able to get some known indie developers to commit to releasing on the platform. I think that will allay many of the fears and doubts currently out there. If they can’t pull that off with $4,000,000 laid down and rising, I will probably consider removing my pre-order and waiting until I see something real. I don’t blame anyone for laying out counterpoints, nor do I blame anyone who would rather hold off until seeing if OUYA actually comes to market or not. I will say that some of what I’ve read has given me pause though and I feel it’s important everyone is informed about this as it has the potential to be great but could also be a legendary bomb if not handled very carefully.

Clearly a lot of people don’t agree with the sceptics but the downside of a Kickstarter being this successful is that all eyes are now on it and OUYA’s creators will have to work extra hard to ensure questions are answered and concerns are addressed. How they handle the next month is going to be a big factor in determining if I stay in and I bet a large number of current and potential contributors also feel the same way. They’re asking for a lot of money though and I feel it’s important people know what they’re getting into. If you haven’t yet decided, I encourage you to read my initial blog post as well as Kuchera’s story and be as informed as you can be. Any Kickstarter you pitch in to is a roll of the dice but the great thing about this type of funding is that it’s democratised by people only choosing to contribute if they believe in it. Since the plan is to sell OUYA at retail, anyone who wants to can opt to not contribute and pick one up when it goes on sale. If you’re sceptical, there’s nothing wrong with that and I’d say you should hold onto your money in that case. I do think Kuchera seems rather determined to write this off as a failure before it’s even started and that some of his reasons are not solid. Now that they’re out there though, the real test for OUYA’s creators will be countering them with good answers. Get to it guys.

Business, Predictions, Predictions, Technology, Video Games , , , , ,

Why OUYA Could Be A Big Deal

2 Comments Posted by on July 11, 2012

Yesterday morning at work, I started getting blips on Twitter about the Kickstarter for OUYA, an Android powered home gaming console that aims to have the hardware of a high-end phone or tablet but designed to connect to a TV with a controller, be wide open and hackable by anyone, all for $99 and principally fuelled by indie games. Within 30 minutes, I’d kicked in at the $95 tier that guarantees me once at launch. Within a few hours, they’d added another tier with 5,000 more pre-order units, then 10,000, now it’s at 20,000 and only a day in, this $950,000 goal project is approaching $3,000,000 and is trending to beat the Pebble Smartwatch which was Kickstarters record project to date.

There’s seemingly crazy interest in this product and from what I’ve seen, it is being put together by people who have shipped some ambitious projects in the past, such as the $100 laptop. $950,000 isn’t nearly enough to mass produce and more critically, market something like this so my guess is that like many other Kickstarter projects, they have investment money waiting in the wings for when they can prove they have people willing to part with money for this. That’s been demonstrated more than twice over already with still a month to go.

As with any announcement that isn’t for an Apple product, there’s legions of people coming out to laugh at it, call it vapourware (I’ve seen comparisons made of this day-old product to the Phantom console which was an investment scam that was backed by a known crook) and draw weak links to other open source gaming products like the GP2X which never attained more than super niche appeal. Others have said that all this enables consumers to do is play cell phone games on their TV which is something that no one’s really asking for and which some Android phones and tablets can already do anyway. It’s a lot of the same narrow-viewed comparisons we saw made when people first started talking about the idea of playing games on an iPhone, something that was largely called a dumb idea that would never take off.

I’ve said many times that I think vast majority of mobile games are crap, including much of the popular stuff. 95% of what’s out there is garbage and of the 5% that isn’t, most are simplistic, unoriginal, boring and increasingly, little more than microtransaction Skinner Boxes. There are exceptions but as a whole, mobile gaming to me doesn’t feel like an evolution of the medium. Yet, not only did I put $95 down to pre-order an Android console, I think it has the potential to be a pretty big deal if its makers get some real investment dollars and market it smartly. I think OUYA is a device of incredible possibilities but its creators have muddied views of this by emphasising what’s the same about it instead of what could be different. Before you go thinking that this is just an Android tablet with a controller and no screen, there are some important points to consider:

1. Android isn’t just for mobile devices. It’s really just highly modified Linux when you get down to it. It’s been primarily used for phones and tablets but it can run on anything you want if you care to modify it for that. Just because something’s on Android doesn’t mean it’s just going to play upscaled mobile titles.
2. It already has a huge number of games available. While Android isn’t just for mobile, running it and similar hardware to some of those devices means there’s already a vast software library available for OUYA out of the gate. Much like when iPhone game developers did when the iPad came out, all it would take is some slight modifications and your existing Android game is ready to be bought and played again on an HDTV, giving both past and current games creators a brand new audience to tap into.
3. It’s a single-purpose device. What often makes Android janky on mobile devices is that they’re trying to be jacks of all trades and are often masters of none.  OUYA is designed to be a games device first. There’s no web browser, no GPS, no cellular radios, minimal multitasking and no carrier bloat. It’s much easier to make a product sing when you have it only performing a single tune well instead of 15 middlingly. It has the hardware of the latest Android phones and tablets but has to do a lot less at a time, that means more power for the main attraction.
4. It’s hackable. The worst part of both gaming consoles and non-Android phones and tablets is that they’re closed systems. You’re only able to use them the way the manufacturer allows. OUYA is not only hackable, its creators are embracing that. What that means is that there are an unlimited number of possibilities for it both in gaming and non-gaming contexts. For the average consumer, this probably won’t mean much initially but once the hardcore community gets their hands on this and if they can make their hacks easy to apply, this device could have a huge lifespan doing all matter of different things.
5. It’s got a proper controller. Touch screens are great for many things but when it comes to gaming, they’re severely limiting in many ways and are the main reason why many mobile titles fail to impress me. OUYA doesn’t have its own screen, it has a proper controller with analog sticks, a d-pad and buttons. While developers may be coding on something with mobile guts, they’ll now have the freedom to make more complex games that can take advantage of the extra inputs, precision and lag-free response that a controller offers. We may even see some figure out how to make games that can work on both input types, making them cross-platform and therefore, more appealing to more people.
6. It’s dirt cheap and indie powered. So many talking heads in the gaming industry are going on about how retail pricing models are broken and that there’s no future in games that aren’t $0.99 or free. Yet they continue to ignore that when the barrier to entry involves a $500 tablet or a $200 smartphone with an $80 per month contract, that still puts gaming out of the reach of many people. I don’t know how OUYA’s creators plan to sell this thing at retail for $99 but that’s their claim. If so, this is a huge deal because it makes entry very cheap while also giving access to all the $0.99 and free games to go with it. There’s a ton of potential gamers out there who can’t take part in the supposed mobile revolution and with this, now they can. Best of all, since OUYA’s being primarily touted as a platform for indie games, it gives those creators a huge new mainstream audience to advertise to, people who didn’t even know indie games were a thing.

I think OUYA’s creators put together a slick pitch but it isn’t without problems. The name of the product is terrible and they didn’t even say what it meant in the pitch. They spent too long pointing out how similar this is to other Android devices while not focusing on what makes it different and some of their design needs refinement, especially the controller. They also didn’t really talk about what their business model is since these things can’t have much of a hardware margin with what they’re selling for and one of their main points is how most of the games will be free. Even Nintendo who traditionally makes money on their hardware ultimately needs strong software sales on top of that to make real money.

Ultimately it’s going to take a product like this getting to market to show whether the idea is viable and I think it’s a critical experiment to attempt, even if it ends up flopping. This is going to need major retailer support and a slick, expensive marketing campaign to stand out not only against existing home consoles but the very smartphones and tablets it’s design borrows from. If they don’t have many millions waiting in the wings to back up this Kickstarter, they’re not going to get the critical mass they need. Nonetheless, I think this has the potential to be a big deal and maybe shake up the home console space which many people have already written off as dead. This is far from true when you speak in reality instead of hyperbole but n0netheless, the current three party system needs a shakeup and OUYA could be the device to do it. Even if it only secures a distant fourth place in the console race, that could still be a huge win for its creators as when you don’t have a huge company to support, you don’t need to sell as much to do well. When this is done, I’m going to end up with either one of the first in a new breed of home gaming devices or a collector’s item that can go up against the Virtual Boy. Only time will tell but even as someone who doesn’t like most mobile games, I think this has great potential and I’d love to see it succeed. I can’t fault anyone for not buying in until they see something real but gamers should give this idea a chance to impress before writing it off.

Business, Predictions, Predictions, Technology, Video Games , , , , ,

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