The final OUYA retail console is ready
It's been a long time coming, and now the Android-powered, Kickstarter-funded OUYA video game console is finally heading to backers. Sure, the final retail units for non-backers won't be available until June,
but around 50,000 lucky folks who pledged over $99 to OUYA's massively
successful campaign will be receiving their units in the coming days.
We've already heard what developers have to say
about it, but this week we got our first hands-on with the miniature,
Tegra 3-powered game console we've been hearing so much
about since last
summer.
Is it the "best Tegra 3 device on the market," as OUYA's claimed? Let's find out!
Hardware

Our first-blush impressions of the gamepad, unpaired from the console,
are mostly positive. The controller has a good heft to it, doesn't feel
cheap and the buttons / analog sticks are appropriately clicky and
maneuverable. The only real issues are the shoulder buttons and
triggers, which both look and feel cheap -- the triggers were actually a
sticking point for OUYA with the development kit that launched last
December, and it seems the company's still got some kinks to iron out
there.
The faceplate on each side of the controller's face detaches, which is
where you replace the two AA batteries that power it. OUYA also says
it'll offer customizable faceplates, but, well, we're just not that
excited by the prospect. Additionally, since it's simply a Bluetooth
controller, the OUYA gamepad can be used on any Bluetooth-compatible
device; to that same end, any Bluetooth-enabled controller works
wirelessly with OUYA (so, Sony's DualShock 3, for instance, but not
Microsoft's Xbox 360 gamepad -- you'd have to plug in a wired 360
gamepad via USB).
The console itself is incredibly small. It's less than half the size of
the gamepad, actually. What it lacks in size, however, it makes up for
in density. The OUYA is a heavy little box, intentionally weighted to
support the various cables you'll plug into its rear to hook it up to
your television. It's also incredibly quiet -- with no discs to spin and
a fan that rarely kicks up dust, the OUYA runs whisper-quiet. Beyond
just quiet and heavy, though, the OUYA is a pretty little thing. The
brushed aluminum on its four sides looks sharp, and the tinted, glossy
plastic up top gives the console a quality look. Hiding the fan on the
bottom is another nice touch -- Jawbone Jambox designer Yves Béhar sculpted a final product that both stands out and subtly fits into existing media centers.
Software
OUYA's software UI is, to put it lightly, very sparse. Just four
submenus branch from the main dashboard: Play, Discover, Make and
Manage. The Manage menu is little more than a way to directly access the
hidden Android settings -- it brings up a standard Android settings
menu, which we're told will be swapped for a custom screen in the future
-- so let's put that aside for now. Play acts as your content manager,
where both games and applications that you've downloaded reside. It's
essentially a file dump, organized into visual tiles -- not thrilling,
but certainly serviceable for current purposes. Discover is perhaps the
most interesting of the areas -- it's a stand-in for "place where you
purchase content" -- and it's a curated store helmed by recent hire
Kellee Santiago. Not only does it allow for various categorical
organization and featured games, but it also enables popular games to
bubble up naturally via thumbs-up icons that users can employ for each
game. Make is another unique twist, offering a section for devs to
upload builds of their games for all to play; call it a glorified beta
section, but its promise is what excites us most. Not only can devs
upload and crowdtest their games, but players can test out their own
builds on the fly through sideloading.

Troubling, however, is the noticeable lag between the game controller
and the OUYA. From games to UI, the lag was a noticeable issue -- other
journalists we spoke with encountered the same issue. It's not something
that's impossible to fix, of course. Even Nintendo's speeding up its
Wii U software issues in an upcoming patch, so it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see OUYA correcting the lag issue before June's retail launch.
It's also hard to fault what is -- for now -- a niggling issue with a
$100 game console that went from Kickstarter to available in around 10
months. The promise of the console is far more appealing, and the time
we've spent with the OUYA has us even more excited for its unknown
future.
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