Yes, that is a real concern, and part of the reason why I was leery of spending any money on the system. (yet another reason why the system failed to take off)
This generally doesn’t deter me from acquiring the hardware, though. The system itself is still root-able, so I can wipe the standard OUYA OS and replace it with whatever I please. (most likely some flavor of Android) For anyone to use it as it was originally intended, it would be a serious concern.
Oh right it had some kind of built in marketplace connection. I remember reading about that. Can you not point it to another place to get games or otherwise load them in on an sd card, usb or something? I will have to read up on it. Been a while since I checked it out.
That’s a nice thing about a C64 or Amiga. Those die hard users have Internet access to buy direct from developer websites as well as being able to continue working with the ole mail order practice.
I don’t know a lot of the inner workings, but I imagine you could copy APK files over and run them… I just don’t know for sure. As Richard said, though, if you get in there and root it, you could do whatever you pleased.
I know the system at one point did a call-home check to see if it was online and could reach http://ouya.tv. I don’t know if it was required for the system to operate or not, though.
Yeah, if it’s like any other Android device the free apps will continue to work but paid ones phone home to check the license every once in awhile to validate. I wouldn’t be shocked if the server is shut down that they stop working.
Yeah you can sideload apk’s and can run google play and amazon store apps on the ouya (although most of those aren’t designed for the controller). Paid apps of those stores (ie. bombsquad of fire tv would probably run on the ouya) however that wouldn’t help you because you’d have to pay for it again to “authorize” with amazon’s servers.
We won’t find out for sure until later but I would suspect that the paid ouya apps would stop working. As always though I have a feeling the xda forums Ouya page will find other ROMs that you could load up to try and make it more useful when that day comes that they shut down their servers.
I didn’t get in because of the crappy registration system, but my boss is at build and demoed that. He said its nowhere as good as they made it look in that vid, which is too bad, because that was some serious future jetsons stuff there.
I bid $1 for Ouya. Anyone care to bid higher?
For an OUYA console or do you mean for the whole shebang platform and all? Lol
Knowing @Tomnnn , I think it’s pretty clear which he meant. 
Its mostly a gimmick for me at the moment until it proves itself on the market. But compared to the Wii, Oculus Rift, etc this is a gimmick I think I would actually enjoy messing around with. Unity is supposed to be getting full support for it.
Not supposed, Unity IS getting full support for it: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/04/29/announcing-support-for-microsoft-hololens/
And inherit millions in debt?
EDIT: Woops quoted the wrong person 
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine who is going to want to buy the company at this point. That debt they’ve got piled up doesn’t exactly make it a tasty dish to swallow. The most valuable thing about the company is the branding, and even that’s been somewhat tarnished. OUYA has decent visibility, thanks in large part to their successful Kickstarter campaign. (and slight retail presence) But the on-line store isn’t particularly desirable as it is in its current configuration. And the hardware is less desirable than it used to be with so many capable competitors on the market. (in the micro-console and stick market) So we’re pretty much just left with the branding, and I’m not sure that’s enough to offset the debt.
Anyone who was looking to pick up the company and actually make something of it would have to do a near about-face on the direction that the company is going in. To saddle yourself with that kind of debt only to have to immediately back-peddle and do an immense amount of work sounds more like a headache than a value.
About $175 on Amazon and up to $300 on ebay so I guess it is dead and is now becoming somewhat valuable. I will pass. I did find something slightly interesting during my search: Mad Catz M.O.J.O.
Most gamers don’t want a minimalist console, they want a console that can play decent looking games on their big screen TV on their couch, while not wanting to fork out $600 for an Xbox or PS4.
I get the minimalist niche, but it’s exactly that, a niche. If you give that little console more power with later graphics tech, you expand that niche, and more developers put their games on the console, because it allows their games to look and run better.
The whole ecosystem improves and more people get a console for a low low price, and more developers make games for that ecosystem. A win win for developers and gamer’s pockets.
Did you notice it supports Ouya content? I feel like Ouya may have stood a better chance if they had focused on making a quality content distribution platform and simply relied on third parties for the hardware.
What @Schneider21 said.
I just need to rename the company American Ouya Freedom Restoration and it’ll get a free bailed out plus several million from Sheldon Adelsen. Then I can resell it for billions or declare bankruptcy close it down keeping the bail out money myself. Gotta live that American dream, yo.
Whoa there, the American education system has already patented that idea.
I’m the other way around. I think their hardware was fine, it’s their software/documentation/services that really lacked. (Unfortunately when I was playing with it it seemed to lack because they only had one guy handling far more stuff than he could reasonably handle. Not sure if that’s the case or if he was just a single point of community liaison.)
With Fire TV I was initially a little skeptical about the lack of documentation. It was something like “Install the Android SDK and here’s the controller mappings.” So I did that, and was super pleasantly surprised that there is no more documentation because there does’t need to be. You deploy to and run on the device and… that’s it. It’s exactly the same as any other Android device.
On Ouya on the other hand… well, I’ll just say it was a different story.
Towerfall did go to be succesful on steam. Sold 50k units at $15 a pop according to steamspy which aint bad.
http://steamspy.com/app/251470
Right, but the point wasn’t that there weren’t good games, it’s that games didn’t sell on the system. Towerfall is a great example of a game perfect for the limited Ouya platform, and yet it still couldn’t succeed there.