{"id":17830,"date":"2013-03-11T20:26:30","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T01:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=17830"},"modified":"2013-03-11T20:26:37","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T01:26:37","slug":"sxsw-ouyas-ceo-thinks-the-ouya-is-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/hardware\/sxsw-ouyas-ceo-thinks-the-ouya-is-awesome\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW: OUYA&#8217;s CEO Thinks The OUYA Is Awesome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Julie Urhman might be a great fundraiser, but she\u2019s no saleswoman. The CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ouya.tv\/\">OUYA<\/a> &#8212; the Kickstarter-funded wunderkompany that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/ouya\/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console\">raised more than $8.5 million dollars<\/a> to build an independent, developer-friendly video game console &#8212; thinks her product is incredible. But if you press her for details on why you, the consumer, might actually purchase one, you\u2019ll receive nothing more than a rapid-fire burst of optimistic, but incredibly vague talking points. Or at least, that&#8217;s how the scene played out during her panel at SXSW on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>For those readers unfamiliar with the OUYA (and they can easily be forgiven for that), it runs on Android, it&#8217;s constructed using cheap and readily available components, and the system is intended to be a way for game developers to sidestep the massive budgets and sprawling development teams needed to produce a successful console game. All OUYA games will be free to try online before purchase. The final box is set to release is June and will retail for $99.<\/p>\n<p>All of these are good ideas on the surface and 63,416 Kickstarter backers seem to agree. However, the fact remains that even after the OUYA is built and in stores, it has a hard road ahead of it. The history of living room gaming is littered with dead consoles that simply never caught on, all underwritten by companies with far greater resources at their disposal. Potential OUYA buyers might wonder why they should spend even $99 on a device with a nebulous future.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/U39L4mEyIRc\" height=\"323\" width=\"575\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Uhrman\u2019s keynote at SXSW Interactive was a massive opportunity to gain a few converts, but she did herself no favors. Interviewed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/\"><em>The Verge<\/em>\u2019s<\/a> Joshua Topolsky, Uhrman was almost relentlessly upbeat, even if details were scarce.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s about empowering creators,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ll never see <em>The Sopranos<\/em> or <em>Breaking Bad<\/em> on network TV,\u201d she argued, likening the OUYA to a cable network willing to allow creative minds to take risks.<\/p>\n<p>Topolsky asked Uhrman how many OUYA units had been pre-ordered through the company\u2019s site. Uhrman was mum.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re very pleased,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Would she perhaps give us a numerical range? She would not.<\/p>\n<p>Was there a big immersive triple-A gaming experience in the works that would be available to hook in large audiences?<\/p>\n<p>Uhrman said that, \u201cIf you want to play <em>Call of Duty<\/em> with 10,000 of your closest friends,\u201d that would always be on Xbox, and it\u2019s not the OUYA\u2019s role to fill that niche.<\/p>\n<p>All right, but will there be something on the production scale of a major studio game? If not a <em>Call of Duty<\/em> necessarily, some big release that generates interest in the hardware?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a game that you have to play and want to play on the OUYA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Topolsky pressed Uhrman further for clarification and asked, \u201cCan you tell me what that game is?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a couple ideas,\u201d Uhrman responded. One would certainly hope she does as the CEO&#8217;s console is schedule to launch in just under three months.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techcitement.comhardware\/sxsw-ouyas-ceo-thinks-the-ouya-is-awesome\/attachment\/ouya_console\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17831\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-17831\" alt=\"Ouya_Console\" src=\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Ouya_Console-e1363050053237.png\" width=\"199\" height=\"201\" \/><\/a>The problem isn&#8217;t Uhrman\u2019s vagueness, per se. It\u2019s that the CEO has far more to gain by being as specific as possible and isn&#8217;t. The OUYA is an idea that can only benefit from a higher public profile, something to define it as anything other than a boutique-y object of geek curiosity. Why not line up a solid slate of launch titles? Certainly, some developer would be willing to commit to a firm release date, even though OUYA\u2019s general relationship with developers is hands off. Why not find solid numbers to trumpet beyond the already well-documented Kickstarter success? OUYA backers and diehard fans are already converted. Hardcore gamers are certain to be the core of the console\u2019s audience in the early going if for no other reason than they&#8217;re far more aware of its existence. And yet, Uhrman and OUYA have done little to entice those gamers not interested in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a puzzling PR stance to say the least. Topolsky addressed this tactic when he mentioned that within 48 hours of the launch of the OUYA kickstarter page, <em>PC Magazine<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/article2\/0,2817,2407046,00.asp\">published an article<\/a> declaring the project a scam. Uhrman allowed that that may have been partially because there was no other evidence of the OUYA\u2019s existence on the web. The company didn&#8217;t even set up an official website.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou were working on this for a long time [before Kickstarter],\u201d Topolsky, said, sounding incredulous. \u201cDidn\u2019t you think maybe you should get a webpage?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause you\u2019re on the internet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In that exchange is as perfect a summation of OUYA\u2019s problems as you&#8217;re likely to see. Uhrman and her company seem weirdly oblivious to the fact that they haven\u2019t yet finished making their case. Securing funding wasn&#8217;t the entire battle. OUYA deserves a chance to succeed, but it will only survive if it uses the admittedly phenomenal fundraising success as a springboard to wider appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julie Urhman might be a great fundraiser, but she\u2019s no saleswoman. The CEO of OUYA &#8212; the Kickstarter-funded wunderkompany that raised more than $8.5 million dollars to build an independent, developer-friendly video game console &#8212; thinks her product is incredible. But if you press her for details on why you, the consumer, might actually purchase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":17837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,907,3062,31,1918],"tags":[4234,3018,2313,4113,2746,2046,4233,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17830"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17830"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17836,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17830\/revisions\/17836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}