OnLive comes to Ouya, Controller Makes Full Frontal Debut

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console/posts/275869

by aiham • 14 years ago

66 66 14 years ago

illumin8• 14 years ago

This has been mentioned before, but by simply using colored circles for their controller buttons, they are ignoring the needs of a lot of color blind gamers. This is why every console manufacturer has symbols on the buttons. Color coding doesn't work so well when a significant percentage of your players can't differentiate between green and red.

This could be solved very easily by picking some symbols to go along with the colors. Of course, our patent and trademark laws are ridiculous and it's highly likely that Microsoft has already patented the letters X, Y, A, and B...

randomdrake• 14 years ago

Seems like a no-brainer to use: O, U, Y, A.

bdz• 14 years ago

there will be letters. and yes, O, U, Y, A. http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_ga...

paulhodge• 14 years ago

Funny story, an early version of the OnLive controller used the letters L,I,V,E, which spelled EVIL when read a certain way.

http://9to5google.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/onlive_control...

aiham• 14 years ago

They state at the bottom of the post:

"P.S. We're still deciding on the buttons. For now, we've stuck with the colored circles as placeholders. But don't fret, we won't leave out colorblind gamers. :)"

fhars• 14 years ago

Not only has it been mentioned before, it is clearly described in the article as an interim solution that will be relaced by something accessible to coulorblind people in the final design.

slantyyz11• 14 years ago

>> Microsoft has already patented the letters X, Y, A, and B..

Wouldn't Nintendo (Super Nintendo), Sega (Genesis and forward) et al. have prior art on this? Microsoft was far from the first to use those letters.

teamonkey2• 14 years ago

Designmarked, not patented I believe. So the green A, red B, blue X, yellow Y are owned by Microsoft. Sony have the circle, triangle, square and cross.

In terms of patents, Nintendo have the cross-shaped D-pad, Sony have the segmented d-pad and Microsoft are left with the awful spongy rocker pad.

arthurbrown• 14 years ago

>> ... it's highly likely that Microsoft has already patented the letters X, Y, A, and B...

Nintendo and Sega have both used this scheme since SNES / Dreamcast respectively (as well as Nintendo DS).

wreckimnaked• 14 years ago

> This could be solved very easily by picking some symbols to go along with the colors. Of course, our patent and trademark laws are ridiculous and it's highly likely that Microsoft has already patented the letters X, Y, A, and B...

That'd be a shame. X, Y, A and B sounds more Super Nintendo than Xbox.

nemo1618• 14 years ago

Not going to lie, that controller is looking pretty ugly. Any word on if they'll support USB controllers? Obviously you'd lose the touch functionality...unless you plugged in a Wacom or something, lol

slantyyz11• 14 years ago

Well, the system is open and hackable, I'm sure someone will write drivers to allow PS3, Wiimotes, 360 and generic USB controllers to be used.

zdw• 14 years ago

PS3 and Wiimotes would be relatively easy, as both are just Bluetooth devices and the OUYA has that built in.

Xbox 360 controllers would require either wired or the RF adapter that MS sells for PC use.

onli2• 14 years ago

This is where projects like this may fail brutally.

Controller-design is hard. Mapping small fast movements to the screen, especially when playing 3D-games, needs a perfectly for the job designed hardware. Consoles lack a good input anyway, compared to the mouse. That is why kinect was so promising, though of course movement-controllers have their own set of issues.

Their solution now is to cave. They didn't design their own controller. Instead, they oviously took the xbox and ps3 controller and merged them. Those controllers solved some issues when compared to the old controllers for the snes and such, with the circle-sticks (which unlike the one from the N64 aren't as high thin and probably therefore longer lasting) and the holdable form.

So the controller is nothing special, but from the conept-side it at least won't be much worse than the ones from current consoles. Maybe using such a generic one was a smart move.

slantyyz11• 14 years ago

>> Consoles lack a good input anyway, compared to the mouse.

I don't get why some people think that gaming is all about FPS's and RTS games.

Why on earth would I want to use a mouse on a game like Street Fighter IV, Tetris, Bust-A-Move, Pac Man, Mario, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, etc. I can name a lot of games that work better with a traditional D-Pad type of controller than they would with a keyboard or mouse.

stewie22• 14 years ago

I'd like to use a keyboard to play street fighter and super mario.

The reason I think keyboard is superior is that when using a keyboard, I can have few fingers on top of keys at the same time. Whereas when using the controller, I just use two thumbs. My thumb has to jump between buttons in order to switch different moves. That is slow.

Cushman5• 14 years ago

The D-pad setup has a serious limitation in that it forces you to use your thumbs. I have ten fingers; with a keyboard, I can have instantaneous command over ten actions (though eight or nine is more usual). With a console controller, it's two. (Four if we count triggers, but console games tend not to have fully-reconfigurable controls.)

I ran into this playing the Tony Hawk games, which I loved on the PC; on the console, executing complex combos feels like a thumb workout.

Obviously it is still a stylistic choice; the keyboard enables faster, more focused play, while the controller encourages a more laid-back playstyle which still feels competitive. But it does that by deliberately crippling the control you have, and you should embrace that.

teamonkey2• 14 years ago

Personal opinion about game controllers aside, I'm worried about infringement. Game controllers are heavily patented and designmarked and their design is as much about avoiding legal pitfalls as making a good input device.

Similarly, doesn't their console UI look dangerously close to the current Xbox dashboard? Surely this infringes on Metro in a big way?

drharris• 14 years ago

Metro is a design philosophy, not anything that can be infringed. Microsoft is actually heavily evangelizing Metro, and would probably be pleased to see the competition playing catch-up for once. That said, individual interactions can be patented, and OUYA would definitely have to steer clear of this. I would say the biggest issue might be the colored button graphics representing the actions to perform; this looks and feels like Xbox, and would probably be a grey area for sure.

pvidler• 14 years ago

If their controller fails horribly, perhaps they could use the OnLive 'universal' controller -- the one that works with OnLive's console as well as all laptops and android/iOS devices. It's actually a really nice controller -- better than the PS3, slightly worse than the Xbox 360 (but without the battery pack issues).

needle02• 14 years ago

Wait, how can the OnLive controller support iOS? AFAIK iOS only supports Bluetooth HID keyboards, not joysticks/gamepads.

stewie22• 14 years ago

not a problem as long as you support USB.

adam-a• 14 years ago

>> That is why kinect was so promising

Perhaps it was promising, but it is fairly terrible in practice. Except for a few dance and fitness games. The thing about traditional controllers is they are both precise and abstracted. Button presses are clear, and work well with the complexity of most games. The analogue features give a higher degree of control but are still very discrete. As for their abstracted nature, one of the distinguishing features of humans vs animals is our ability to use tools, devices which are one step abstracted from direct action. This is why controllers, mice, keyboards, etc work. Why not embrace it instead of trying to work around it with immature technology like the Kinect?

>> Their solution now is to cave. They didn't design their own controller

So why do you think they need to revolutionise the controller? The original XBox had a mild stab at something new but they quickly reverted to a design much more similar to the Playstation Dual Shock. The target market for Ouya is XBLA and PSN players, people who want a cheaper, more open living room console. They are sensible not to try to reinvent the wheel when they don't have the resources to do it well and their audience likes the existing wheel.

onli2• 14 years ago

>So why do you think they need to revolutionise the controller?

I don't. I wanted to point out that they copied an existing, working design. Which is probably a smart thing to do for such a project.

>As for their abstracted nature, one of the distinguishing features of humans vs animals is our ability to use tools, devices which are one step abstracted from direct action.

Careful with such claims ;) Even birds can learn that.

cube133• 14 years ago

>So why do you think they need to revolutionise the controller? The original XBox had a mild stab at something new but they quickly reverted to a design much more similar to the Playstation Dual Shock.

There weren't really that many changes from the original XBox controller to the 360's controller. The face buttons and the stick positions didn't really change. In terms of buttons, the only major change was the removal of the black/white buttons from the original XBox, and the addition of the RB and LB bumpers to the 360.

The major change was that the side grip rails were made smaller.

aprendo• 14 years ago

I don’t think this matters if it’s possible to plug in an Xbox controller. They are ubiquitous, cheap and competent.

89a• 14 years ago

haha! ugly as sin

TheEzEzz2• 14 years ago

The big news here isn't the controller, it's OnLive. With Google fiber rolling out, and eventually pushing the country toward gigabit, there will no longer be any reason why a cheap, weak box with an internet connection can't topple the console giants. Eventually this will spill over into general computing. There is a giant pie to be won here, and both OnLive and Google know how valuable it is.

dguaraglia• 14 years ago

Just pointing out: bandwidth isn't half as important as latency is in this context. We still don't know how good latency will be on Google Fiber.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

Maybe the answer is to have local nodes. Think of it like a traditional video arcade, somewhere in your town is a small datacentre full of servers hosting various games.

khangtoh• 14 years ago

The pipe is not going to be bottleneck in this case. It's the device's speed/processor/etc.

JL2010• 14 years ago

Honest question: is anyone here using onlive? How is the gaming experience? Are the visuals, performance and latency acceptable? How are they doing in terms of their sales/subscribers?

I remember reading about it a long time ago thinking that it would be a sign of the future and something I would definitely want to try. It seems to have fallen off of my radar and I don't know anyone who uses their service, and I would consider myself and my friends "hardcore" gamers.

scrame2• 14 years ago

I played through Arkham Asylum on the PC and Arkham City on the OnLive console, and found it ... adequate.

I tried the beta and it didn't even work, but went back when AA was 99 cents and was impressed that they were even able to make a reality. I pre-ordered AC because it came with the console for free, and it was pretty slick.

However, I subscribed to their "channel" and have been pretty disappointed, the games are mostly old or random indie titles that don't always fit the model, and a good number require a mouse/keyboard which you can make work with the console, but is much clunkier than the slick wireless controller (which is _very_ well done).

There are 2 problems: 1) Anything even smelling like a dropped connection boots you entirely out of the game, and can take a few minutes to get back in. This includes just pausing and walking away for 5-10 minutes.

2) The batman games worked because they have a slower, more deliberate input system, and auto-save constantly. Otherwise it just won't be able to keep up.

So, barring licensing, I just don't see it being able to play something that needs a good twitch response time, multi-player, or something that is hard to recover after an immediate drop. So, no diablo, CoD, real-time strategies, or MMOPRGs.

Without those titles, it won't be able to get a lot of traction.

Still, a really awesome technical achievement. The PC executeable is a couple of _megs_ and can then just stream anything, but a lot of gaming needs either fast response time (which you lose with the server round-trip), or the ability to just stop for a few minutes without losing everything you've got.

Olreich3• 14 years ago

MMOs have lots of potential actually. They are built to deal with lots of lag on input, and hide it well.

Olreich3• 14 years ago

The compression quality is typically rather poor (meaning you get artifacts). The graphical quality as of a few months ago was also poor in comparison to your own rig. It's also got latency issues. They get 80ms or higher on average. So, for fast-paced gameplay, that can be an issue. Also, the stream is only 720p, not 1080p or higher. It's amazing for what it does, and I'm sure that some budget-restricted gamers/families use it, but it's not a replacement for powerful hardware 2-3 feet away from you.

corin_3• 14 years ago

As a gamer - I was excited to use the beta as soon as I got access, was keen to order the box as soon as possible (ended up getting sent one so didn't need to buy it, but I definitely would have), and I think the entire concept is incredibly cool. Truthfully I've hardly played it and the box is mostly gathering dust in between showing friends "look how cool this is", but then I haven't played any games for a few months, and even when I do play games I'm a PC guy, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt. For me the performance wasn't quite good enough - could be my internet, might not be, I'm not sure - but it was good enough that it made me think that at some point it will be good enough. (And I have pretty high standards when it comes to FPS and latency.)

As someone who's talked to the company a fair bit through work - I don't have any figures to give you (not that I could say if I knew them, but I don't know them), all I can say is that I haven't heard of any problems or any negative news from them. As far as I'm aware they're doing pretty well so far.

ondrae• 14 years ago

OnLive has been amazing to me. I've bought a few games on it and rented a handful. I live in San Francisco, so my internet was fast enough for good graphics. When I bought Borderlands, there were plenty of other people to multiplayer with.

I'm kind of hoping to never build a gaming PC again.

nakedgremlin• 14 years ago

I absolutely love it. Two player Harry Potter was glitchy, but other experiences (ie. Borderlands, DarkSiders) all performed perfectly. One of the big bonuses was the fact that it's almost device agnostic -- you can play certain games on touch screen, PCs, Macs, and on the OnLive device itself.

anateus2• 14 years ago

One of the fun things I get from that is that OnLive are going to make an ARM build of OnLive. That means it should be Raspberry Pi compatible! (OnLive have released ARM builds of their desktop service to run on tablets which shouldn't be too far from the full on game product, but afaik this is the first time they've promised an ARM-targeted version of it).

unwiredben• 14 years ago

Maybe... Rasberry Pi has an older ARM core without the v7 instructions and a much simpler GPU than the Tegra 3 chip that's in the Ouya. I'd not expect it to work there.

OnLive comes to Ouya, Controller Makes Full Frontal Debut

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