[solac3]

Ouya's KickStarter feels less like you are "backing it" to make it happen than it does advertizing to potential investors. The video is what I would call more than a little vague and uncertain of itself. Are you backing what "could be" or what WILL be?

[ralfn]

They have working prototypes. They can produce those for less than 99 dollars.

They need investors to prefinance the next batch. Buying the parts requires money,you dont have, until the finished product is sold to a retailer.

In other words: they need cash flow.

[flatline3]

Do they actually have a working prototype? It's very unclear in their messaging, and they show no pictures of even semi-complete devices.

I could attach a ps3 controller to an omap4 evaluation board running Android tomorrow, but that wouldn't make it a proper prototype.

[TillE]

They've raised $5m and counting. What do they need investors for?

[wmf]

R&D money. Most of the $5M will go to manufacturing the consoles they've pre-sold.

[quaunaut]

For possibly ever becoming viable. Look, I'm a fan of indies as much as anyone else, but mass producing a game console- even one with this cheap of parts- is just not possible without more money. I'd be sincerely surprised if the money they've raised so far covered more than just paying the salaries of their employees and get the basic infrastructure set up.

[nitrogen]

Back in 2001 when the original Xbox and PS2 were current-generation consoles, the Indrema console failed because they couldn't get $10mil in capital. With more accessible Chinese manufacturing, more accessible venture capital, and a Kickstarter campaign that's already netted half that amount, I think Ouya stands a pretty good chance of being profitable.

[Volpe]

The fuseproject has existed for a while, where a lot of the skills come from. They aren't building a company from scratch... just a product.

[ralfn]

Those 5m are pre orders. For the next batch, they likely need to prefinance production.

Off course, at that stage, banks would even be willing to lend money, to keep a conservative amount of consoles in stock.

I doubt the margins on this huge first batch are big enough to prefinance the production of the next batch.

[mattmanser]

How much did MS spend on just getting market penetration with the XBox? Wasn't it over a billion? Do you not get how this market works? Do you not remember the Dreamcast? There are massive, colossal flops in the console market out there. How long before MS even started posting a profit?

On the one hand it'd be awesome if they pull it off.

On the other hand they have pretty pictures of controllers, mock ups and what seems like a very delusional CEO. This has all the potential of killing kickstarter forever. Watching the original video makes you think they've actually got f all at the moment and $5 mill's a tiny drop in the ocean for actually making a dent in the console market. And worse than that they've promised $99 consoles before actually manufacturing it.

But the Android angle and the massive free publicity they're getting, they could just pull it off. But their promotional video really gives me nothing but doubts.

[wmf]

The Dreamcast was only a failure compared to Sony and Nintendo. If Ouya sells 10 million consoles and has hundreds of games I think it would qualify as a success by their non-AAA goals.

[ralfn]

Wait: im assuming they have a working prototype.

If no, that would be shocking.

[Steko]

"And how far along are you in building OUYA?

Very. We expect to have a finished product ready to ship to you in March. (With the very first boxes – bugs and all – ready a few months earlier.)

We have a functional prototype, and we have almost completed our industrial design (the shape and materials of the product you see here)...."

That said any Tegra 3 device with 1 GB ram and a bluetooth game controller could qualify as a prototype.

I'm going to agree with mattmanser's skepticism. Ouya is exciting and I suppose I'm rooting for it but I'm 80% sure the last station for this train is CrunchPad-ville.

Ultimately Tegra 3 delivers a level of console graphics that's 8 years old. I may be wrong but it looks like no motion gaming is mentioned nor a big content solution, and those are literally they biggest console advances over the last 8 years.

[mattmanser]

Did we watch a different video?

I saw a lot of mock ups. I saw no working console.

But admittedly perhaps I'm just a cynic who only saw the worst case scenario. I only watched their launch campaign on kickstarter and have no idea where they're at but to me it looked a lot like a bunch of mock ups of what they want, not what is.