Ouya No Bigger Than a Rubik's Cube

Fanghawk

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Ouya No Bigger Than a Rubik's Cube

The Ouya will be the most portable console yet.

People are clearly excited for the Ouya, as seen by <a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console>these 42,000 backers and their 5.4 million dollars. While the funding itself has been incredibly successful, it's very easy to forget that the Ouya is still in the very early stages of development, and the hardware may not resemble the console pictured to the right. Details are slowly being revealed by the Ouya team, most recently and notably the console's size. The Ouya is looking to be the smallest console yet, more portable than even the Gamecube, sitting at no more than a few inches wide.

"Our console is quite small," designer Yves Béhar said during a live Q&A on Kotaku, "around the size of a Rubik's cube, and so it will easily fit anywhere in a room, or be easy to throw in a backpack."

Despite the small size, the console will require a significant amount of power to run on 1080p HD televisions as promised. With a planned Tegra 3 Quad-Core Processor, 1GB of memory, and 8GB of storage fitting into a three-inch margin, the Ouya will need to be efficiently designed to prevent overheating. Béhar assured backers that these factors are being taken into consideration. "We intend to give the Tegra chipset room to breathe, as obviously it does get warm. Airflow is important here."

Now that the excitement over the open-source console is winding down, gritty development details like this are going to become more and more important. After all, the Ouya isn't the first gaming project to start out strong with millions of dollars behind it, and those millions never guarantee success. That said, if the Ouya can actually stand out as a unique, well-designed gaming platform, the small size would be a huge benefit. After repeatedly packing my own consoles into multiple bags when visiting my friends, being able to pick up an entire console and gaming library in one hand would be a refreshing change of pace.

Source: <a href=http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-23-ouya-console-physical-dimensions-sit-at-a-few-inches-wide-says-designer>Games Industry International

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Aeshi

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Ok I'm not really an Ouya (how the hell do you even pronounce that anyway?) fan-to-be and even I think that's a pretty neat achievement for something that seems to have PS2-level graphics.
 

Fappy

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Oh cool, though I wonder if the small size is going to make it more difficult to tinker with.
 

gigastar

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What kind of games is this console supposed to handle? With 8GB of space it just cannot hold most big-budget games of today...
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
This still looks like a phantom to me. I suppose we shall see though.
 

Aeshi

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gigastar said:
What kind of games is this console supposed to handle? With 8GB of space it just cannot hold most big-budget games of today...
I think it's more intended for small indie-ish games, which are usually about a few hundred MB at most.
 

Twilight_guy

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Well that's cool. Of course now that we know its going to be a Little wonder-cube I'm wonder what languages the thing will support. I'd imagine that being open-source someone will release a compiler for any language under the sun but I'm sure some will be more popular and reliable then others.
 

80Maxwell08

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Well it's good to hear they are factoring overheating in the system. The main problem I have with my Galaxy S2 is that it heats up absurdly fast so I have to keep the brightness on minimum so it doesn't get too hot.
 

Eric the Orange

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AC10 said:
I feel the 8 GB of storage is quite limiting.
How much memory is on the average smart phone, because from what I've seen that's the kind of level this is going to be at. 99c app store purchases not 60$ AAA games.
 

Rainboq

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TizzytheTormentor said:
Will it be able to take an external hardrive? 8GB isn't much.

Also, what games will the Ouya play, I haven't looked into it.
Yes, they've said this, plus you have their permission to swap hard drives. Also, it'll play most existing Android games.
 

Weaver

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Eric the Orange said:
AC10 said:
I feel the 8 GB of storage is quite limiting.
How much memory is on the average smart phone, because from what I've seen that's the kind of level this is going to be at. 99c app store purchases not 60$ AAA games.
It depends. Something like the Galaxy S3 has expandable memory in terms of Micro SD cards. If the Ouya has something similar that would be awesome.

I do realize we're talking small independent apps, but mobile apps are only getting larger. For instance, the Ouya is 1080p, so even if you're only doing a 2D game your art assets need to be larger for clear display at a 1080p resolution. I could see a game being 200 megabytes.

Why I feel it's limiting, however, is because the Ouya's business model is free games that will almost all likely have a paid component (unless the dev is altruistic). This means DLC, DLC, DLC; and if you just went download crazy on your first day and got every game that tickled your fancy on the Ouya store for free, you could quickly reach the 8GB limit (in my opinion).
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

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Seeing as I lug along my gamecube to parties all the time for Smash battles, I can appreciate an even more portable console.

*temptation to spend money on OUYA rising...*
 

mattaui

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I'm really hoping they do well, but I also hope they're prepared to manage the chaos after they end up with all those millions of dollars and thousands of expectant customers. Wired has a very interesting little article about some KS projects with runaway fundraising levels that caused much bigger headaches than anticipated.

They're really going to need to deliver on games that benefit from running on a HDTV with gamepad support, considering nearly everything designed for the Android platform is meant to be played on a much smaller touch screen.
 

Albino Boo

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AC10 said:
Eric the Orange said:
AC10 said:
I feel the 8 GB of storage is quite limiting.
How much memory is on the average smart phone, because from what I've seen that's the kind of level this is going to be at. 99c app store purchases not 60$ AAA games.
It depends. Something like the Galaxy S3 has expandable memory in terms of Micro SD cards. If the Ouya has something similar that would be awesome.

I do realize we're talking small independent apps, but mobile apps are only getting larger. For instance, the Ouya is 1080p, so even if you're only doing a 2D game your art assets need to be larger for clear display at a 1080p resolution. I could see a game being 200 megabytes.

Why I feel it's limiting, however, is because the Ouya's business model is free games that will almost all likely have a paid component (unless the dev is altruistic). This means DLC, DLC, DLC; and if you just went download crazy on your first day and got every game that tickled your fancy on the Ouya store for free, you could quickly reach the 8GB limit (in my opinion).


I agree, there almost certainly will be SD slots. I suspect the 8gb of storage is there so it can hit its price point, the extra money to make it usable will come out of you pocket anyway. I also think that the power supply will be external, like a laptop one, that would reduce the heat build up in a small case.
 

cidbahamut

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Ten bucks says the power supply is bigger than the console completely defeating the purpose of trying to cram all the components into a poorly ventilated tiny cube.

There's just so much wrong with this console and people just take it all at face value. It makes me want to scream.
 

Krion_Vark

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gigastar said:
What kind of games is this console supposed to handle? With 8GB of space it just cannot hold most big-budget games of today...
>.>
Its not supposed to handle Triple A games. It is meant to give indie developers the chance to develop games for the TV. Why do you think theres a big hullabaloo about the games people were asking for there to be on it when they were mostly triple A games? Its not supposed to stand up or compete with the 360 or PS3. Its supposed to give an alternate to those with hopefully really good indie games for it.