How to revive your Ouya: Here are the resources I mention in the video: Ouya World: ouya.world/ Christian Weiske's server & guide: ouya.cweiske.de/ Ouya World Magazine: archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22OuyaFuture+Staff%22
Dan! I backed the kickstarter and frankly I think that the Ouya team did everything right .... except figuring out how to keep a revenue stream. I haven't plugged my Ouya in in years but I know exactly where it's at and in the coming weeks I'm going to break it out and see if I can get it going again. Thanks for the video!
If you have a file explorer on your ouya, you can copy and paste the text file for the new store dns from a usb drive to internal storage. A tad bit easier if you’ve never plugged it into your computer.
As an Ouya developer who poured 2 years of my life into developing a game for this platform (called “Nub for Ouya”), I’m glad that our work hasn’t gone into an endless oblivion, and reassured that our fans can still get what they paid for 😊
@@SockyNoob Hiya, not sure our stuff was that well known if I'm honest lol, but in my opinion the best games we did was Rush Hour Mayhem and Mr Monocles Travels
I'm glad that there's a way around the DRM that keeps people out of their purchases. I really hate this mentality corporations have where customer purchases are dead when the company says so. People mock the Ouya hardware, but I'm sure plenty of people made purchases that they 100% should access to & shouldn't have to result to cracking to get their games.
I mean we're all used to games as a physical medium that can't be taken away from you unless your house gets robbed, and now we've given up on the idea of a owning a physical object because it's backward and inconvenient, we have to find a way of restoring the inalienable right to use a digital product you have paid for no matter what happens to the company that sold them
@@rorychivers8769 Which you can with pretty much any game now and I bet going forward, it's not hard to get around and systems will be hackable eventually it's only a matter of time.
@@lothar71 Sure, but it still falls short of acknowledgement by the industry that you should be able to use what you paid for no matter what happens. Toys Я Us went bust, but it didn't suddenly stop my LEGO from working until I found a workaround
I'm not gonna lie. When I first saw the Ouya on store shelves, the idea of a 99 dollar console running a highly moddable OS like Android was almost magical to me at the time. I didn't pull the trigger tho and I felt so bad when I learned how rough things had gone for the little guy, so it makes me so damn happy to see some people getting some use out of them.
I bought an Ouya in 2013 and wanted to make a game for it since I had used Multimedia Fusion 2 for years and could make Ouya games with the Android exporter. What put me off in the end was frame rate issues I could'nt solve and the tons of shovelware being released for it overall. I've never thought it's a bad little console but I do wish people didn't keep throwing bad quality games onto the store.
Tho i agree. I kinda like digging through "free" shit to find gems. Playing knockoff elder scrolls was neat. There was a mystery game I kept eyes on. Ironicly the 2 KS games for "Ouya" I funded never released on ouya haha, but on other devices.
The Ouya just didn't really have any games of its own, or any unique IP. Most of the games were just shovelware, bad ports, or knockoffs of games that were already succesful elsewhere.
Gaming companies: Cloud based and "always online" gaming is the future to prevent pirating Customers: - *pirate games on systems that can no longer be supported* - They just don't get it, do they? You can't have a non-physical media on a cloud somewhere and tell people it'll never go away.
A lot of people complained about the controllers and especially the lag. I also experienced the lag, but I also figured out is was because of wireless reception. Sometimes I could only get a controller to work good within about 8 feet of the Ouya. Also the system will lag if you are downloading other games in the background.
I bought the Ouya and extra controllers way back when and had a TON of fun in college playing casual games, especially TowerFall and BombSquad. Recently my kids have gotten old enough to learn it and were having a blast until...they uninstalled TowerFall. 😭 This guide gives me hope of getting it back, even if I've lost years of stats (and specifically my character's win ratio 😁).
I wanted to buy a Ouya back in the day to plug into a HD CRT TV that only displayed 480i/p and 1080i. But since the Ouya didn't support 1080i, I decided just to stick with a Xbox 360 since its scaler could output 1080i pretty good. The biggest competition this little cube had was the Raspberry Pi which could be used to learn programming on a cheap little board. In hindsight, the Ouya could be considered the precursor to the Nvidia Shield TV and those Android TV boxes coming from China.
It honestly was. I installed Kodi early on in 2014 or 15 and used it as a tv box up till server shutdown. (Well till kodi unsupported the android version ouya runs) With retro emulation mixed in.
Got my first OUYA as a present without knowing first what to do with it, but it quickly became a fun obsession of mine, my guilty pleasure. Made lots of videos showing the good and entertaining games and I was always thinking about how to save the library. My OUYAs all worked when the network was gone, but some games couldn't check their license anymore and the turned to trial mode... so I was very happy to be able to perform the hack. My OUYAs are all alive and well and we still enjoy the couch multiplayer games from time to time.
I've still got mine in its box gathering dust (somewhere) so I'll be digging it out and getting it configured! I was gutted that this system didn't catch on but after watching this I feel I'm not alone. Many thanks, Dan. - Dave
I was developing indie games at the time and kickstarted one of the developer tiers planning to make a game for it. When I got the dev unit (mine wasn't delayed) I was so disappointed with the controllers that I hardly played the unit and didn't bother making a game for it. I know they said they were going to improve the controllers but I was so put off that my Ouya journey ended there.
@@SVW1976 Now that's just not cool. For every indie game that is 'low quality', there's usually one to be found that is a modern classic. Without a vibrant indie scene, we wouldn't have games like Shovel Knight, Rogue Legacy, Pier Solar and the Great Architects, Hades, CrossCode, Timespinner, and many other great games.
I bought into that and due to some damage in shipping wound up with two of them. I eventually got my money back selling the two after the company went down. It was a good idea but also it would have been more fun if just an Android computer so we could just use the Google Play store.
The problem with the ouya, aside from the project looking an awful lot like a money laundering stunt, its 'ceo' being an obvious grifter and the unforgivably stupid name, was the same problem as most single board computers today (such as raspberry pi) .. as a platform for a game console, there is no practical advantage to the formfactor. It's _too_ small for its own good; its size and shape is a gimmick that neuters its performance. Even in 2013, a low powered x86 mini-itx system would run circles around any arm based products. If you're hooking it up to a gigantic TV, why does the system need to be smaller than the controller? It made absolutely no sense.
@@pikachulovesketchup666 don't really understand why you keep calling stuff trash just because it's not computationally powerful lmfao, some of the most fun I've had was playing scummvm games, went back to broken sword yesterday and enjoyed it just as much. Will definitely play Simon the sorcerer again sometime soon. Even the switch is running on a Tegra btw, but botw is still mechanically better than 100% of the games coming out today and also more appealing to look at than most of them
@@pikachulovesketchup666 Pi is "trash", but it's absurdly inexpensive and competent enough for emulation, which is what mostly used it for when it comes to gaming (not to mention the plethora of useful non-gaming related stuff you can do on it)
My Ouya still has a side-loaded version of android release of Shadowrun (2013) on it, which sadly was pulled from the store a good few years ago. Ran pretty well from what I remember.
I bought one of these not long after the initial release because I thought, with a little work, it could be a really great retro machine. Never got around to that, and other things came along that largely removed the need, but I also never bothered to try and sell it because I figured I'd find something to do with it sooner or later. Thanks for these resources. I may just dig the funny little thing out and give it a go.
I made a game for OUYA. It was called IronWalker and was definitely an amateur effort but it's the nearest I'll ever get to releasing a game on a 'console' so I was pretty happy.
The Ouya was a fantastic idea but with a delayed and underwhelming implementation. Back when android was spreading like a wildfire, it was a great idea to make an affordable device that would play android games on TV. Not that there were any good games back then but the Android ecosystem was growing. The problem was that by the time it was released, Sony had announced PS4 and public interest shifted to the new Sony console.
I think what really killed it also came out right with xbox360 and ps3 started. making self publishing way easer. Steam greenlight as well. While when it was announced on ks it was extremly restricted.
This doesn’t work and I am not sure why he made this video. I tried it several times for hours and got nowhere which brought back all the sadness of them killing off support and breaking all my favorite games.
@@kylemulkey9659 I tried to turn on my OUYA just a moment ago and now it won’t even load. So yeah, cheap stuff often goes dead. Maybe it was on its last life last I used it?
I have one of the special edition Kickstarter Ouyas as well as 4 of the custom engraved covers for the remotes. It may not be the most powerful little console, but it is still neat to whip out and play all kinds of neat fun games on it still as well as reasonable emulation. Do wish it had a Tegra 4 rather than the Tegra 3, but eh.
I admittedly found the Ouya to be a joke, but it’s pretty cool that there were people who weren’t gonna let it go to waste and found legitimate uses despite it failing it its original purpose. Stuff like this is always commendable and I’m here for it.
I still love this little guy. I actually have two of them. One at my house, one in my rv. It's a great little, one-stop-shop for everything media in my RV when I'm traveling, whether it's watching movies, playing games, or flipping through pics and videos I took that day while sight seeing. I also love that the community has kept it alive. There were alot of fun little indy gems out there.
My biggest gripe with the console is the weak signal strength between the console and the controller. Random amount of input delay, sudden loss of connection at all and interference when using two or more controllers made it completely pointless for any form of "serious" gaming. Try 1CC-ing a shmup or have any sort of competition on there and the crappy input signal will drive you nuts. And I tried ALL the workarounds... I put it on its side, I sat no more than one feet away, I made sure no other devices were close, I soldered an extra piece of antenna to the controller circuit board, I updated its firmware, I tried both my launch controllers and the later revisions, even recieving one directly from the fellas from Ouya. Nothing made it even slightly better. A crying shame!
I have a limited edition white OUYA. I use it often and everything on it works. All of the installed software works. All of the games run. All the emulators work. It won't give you any problems about being connected to the web until you try to connect it. And honestly why are you trying to connect it when you know the server is 100% off line?
The hugely obvious thing that originally killed the Ouya was that it had no access to the Google Play Store (or Amazon Appstore I guess if you must). When it came out without that massive library of Android games that people already played on phones/tablets, I instantly knew it was doomed. Valve did exactly the same thing with their Steam Machines (limited native-only Linux library), but compounded it by only having third parties manufacture the hardware (so it was inevitably overpriced because OEMs couldn't sell them as loss leaders as they didn't get a 30% game cut like Valve did). At least the Steam Deck corrects this and that's why I've reserved one. A bit surprised that the resurrected Ouya store with free downloads of commercial games hasn't had a legal challenge about this from at least one Ouya developer. Maybe it has and they've pulled games where such objections have been raised? It's most likely to happen where the game is still a paid one and actively developed on the Google Play Store.
Great video, nice to see my terrible game in the magazine again. Rerez did a video slamming the console 2 months ago and you could clearly see he'd connected to the new server to download the games. No mention of the community and the latest game jams though. Just jumped on the bandwagon of "it was a massive failure". Unless you actually sit down with the console and play some of the strange and interesting titles that released you won't get anything out of your time
Never thought I'd get to use an OUYA console until this video has perked my interest .. perhaps just like the C64, older consoles will indeed experience a 'revolution'! The OUYA box wasn't lying! :D
So much hype on the Ouya still remember Rich from Review Tech USA going on about it Glad it’s still got a use in 2022 and games are still available cheers Dan
Id be as likely to attempt to start my own airline as I would to create my own games console. Just too difficult, too expensive to make work and too much well established competition. Wouldnt go near the idea.
I think this console gets shot of unfair flack. While it's somewhat a business failure they designed a console and made it to production. I actually think it's a nice design and it was an inspiring concept. It seems very easy to criticize the misteps of others these days. They tried something new, something different and I think that in itself is worthy of praise.
First Kickstarter I supported and got the Bonze founders version. I would call it a failure as it didn't do what it was designed to do. With that said it did much more then it was supposed to do and mine got lots of use. Today people wonder why anybody would want this with Raspberry Pi and all the Android Boxes available, back then they were not as well known as they are today. Mine was much like this video, a file server for videos and Kodi and emulators. I enjoyed it so much i picked up several when people were dumping them for $5-10 each and setup them up for people i knew, a few are still being used today. I have moved to a tiny windows server to replace it , but it was great for the 2-3 years I used it.
People fail to realize just how shitty the Raspberry Pi was to use back then. And all these emulation handhelds and boxes just weren't much of a thing back then.
Fascinating stuff. It's also timely with the recent news about Nintendo closing the Wii U and 3DS eShops - games that could disappear forever without preservation or sideloading/emulation. In some ways the Ouya was lucky and unlucky with its timing. The recent rush of emulation boxes tends to suggest it was onto something.
Excellent - thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I had found a set of games somewhere on the web which I had downloaded for the future but this is a much better solution. I have packed up my OUYA but it's in it's original box with power supply and cables ready to go at any time. Keep up the good work on The Retro Hour. Loved the recent Christmas Quiz.
A shame it was so overhyped, people literally believed they'd get a $100 console that was equal to the xbox and the play station when in reality it was just an android box with some low quality controllers.
Nowadays we're spoiled for choice for ARM+android devices... I got rid of my Ouya once I realized the awful controller lag was a hardware issue and not something that could be fixed with a software update. It could have been really great, though.
I always liked my ouya and was very disappointed I could no longer play the games I bought. For sure will give this a go. But I do now have a Pi 400 and really love the spectrum oric feel of the thing, like going back in time!
Oh a further worth while footnote for this video. At the time Razor took over, they started work on the ForgeTV, that was supposed to be a updated Ouya with access to Google store and Cortex and such. They even gave Ouya console owners a store credit to get it at a discount. I was swayed enough to buy the device. However I quickly returned it, since any of the rooting type stuff was completely removed, and even though you had access to the Ouya store, it was highly filtered with only a handful of games accessible, and no save transfers at all from the Ouya.
I enjoyed my years of owning an ouya, many people looked at it as a failed console but it was one of the first big android tv boxes and if you used it like one it was very good, the tegra 3 was overclocked and gave enough cpu power to even emulate the dreamcast back in 2014! it failed because it was looked at as a 4th games console.
@@ClipahoyFor real dude?!! I had no idea that the console based on Android and a mobile phone chip had phones faster than it! You gonna tell me next that there's laptops faster than the one in my living room right now?
My favorite thing about the Ouya was the indie multiplayer games like Hidden in Plain Sight. Still love the two Towerfall games. Plugged it in a few days ago and the games still worked, I'll be applying the fix you mention to keep it going longer. While real gamers may complain about the console for a casual gamer like myself it was good enough, especially at the $99 price point.
I’ve never owned an Ouya, but I’ve heard that there was even a game that recommended using a PS3 controller to fix the controller lag or something lol. Really sucks people had to deal with that, because the idea of this little console was pretty awesome at the time.
Fun video, thanks! Personally my media streaming PC, also running this type of simpler games is about the same size (it is a Chuwi LarkBox Pro), or perhaps even smaller than the Ouya.
I purchased the ouya specifically to be a very tidy and easy to use emulator box that did not require a keyboard or mouse to use at ANY time in its life. It provided this exactly as I wanted. So I consider the console a success. I don't want any junk getting in between me and the game. I just want the TV, the controller in my hand, and the game. That's it. Nothing else. The ouya did this nicely.
This is great, worked like a charm! This vid made me brush the dust off my old OUYA. Nice to have "the store" available again! I also have many emulators on it that I run from the "Nostalgia" front-end. These factors combined, makes this a little box for hours of fun!
Shame on you! At least I turned mine on long enough to confirm it’s a horrible experience. If the controller was at least useable then it may have had a chance… oh well.
Thank you for making this video. I literally found this system in my closet and was about to throw it out but decided to check youtube to see if there was any use for it now. Found your video and now i'm going to keep it and use it!
I tried updating mine three days before the servers went down, now it has graphical glitches at the start and no longer works, can't even get to the splash screen. Maybe the community can help out some day
Odds are that any modern Raspberry Pi can blow the Ouya out of the water, when it comes to processing power and practical performance. The Raspberry Pi will also have the advantage of being a more open-ended system. As far as I can tell, no one has gotten the Ouya OS, or the third-party Ouya servers, to work on a Raspberry Pi. People have gotten Android to work on the Raspberry Pi, and there are open-source gaming projects that can work on it. For example, people have gotten Half-Life to work on the Raspberry Pi. People have also used x86 emulation to run Steam, and some 2D indie games run fairly well, through Steam.
I bought one since it wasn't that expensive but I never actually bought a game for it. I knew if the servers ever went down I would be SOL and sure enough they did. I did have some of the emulators on there and I personally found they didn't work that well. Maybe they got updated later on but N64 didn't work at all and even NES/SNES had alot of input lag. I might have to give this a go one day looks pretty interesting. Still don't think it will replace my Raspberry pi 4 though.
I was one of the original backers. I think my experience summarized some of the problems they had. Originally I payed for one console and 4 controller (one was included so +3) and yes I was worry because it took forever to get to me. Once it actually did I actually what I god was 2 console and 7 or 8 controller. I don’t know how such an error was made but if I wasn’t the only one that could make them run out of money pretty fast.
Bit of a warning on the reliance of online servers in order to play games you paid for. Anything you buy online should be made drm free when servers go offline.
@@blunderingfool Not sure what you mean? People who have bought the game would have already downloaded them. They only need to release a patch to remove drm for their games.
I was one of the people that never got my OUYA (though I vaguely remembering that I did get my 2nd controller). It wasn't until 2 years ago when a friend and colleague was "Hey I got this, but I never use it, do you want it?" as he knew I had been purchasing old consoles that I had never got to play as a child (don't worry, I had a PC and played plenty of games). It wasn't until after we learned that the services had shutdown and that the device was essentially a brick. Still, I'm fairly certain I never threw it away. Who knows, maybe I'll dig it up and, for the first time ever, I'll press the power button of an OUYA (even though I was a backer xD)
The worst thing about it imo was the input lag (especially of the original controller). I used it without the enclosure, since that somewhat reduced the lag. I still liked it though, and wished it would have become successful.
I think there's actually been some mainline Linux kernel work, if I remember correctly? It's either that or postmarketOS is working on it, or some other project. There's definitely some work being done.
They have this cool thing now called the "Google Chromecast with Google tv" where I can play literally every retro Nintendo and Sega game known to existence with an 8 bit do Bluetooth controller.
If you can download the full priced commercial games for free now, then what about the microtransactions (such as when you have to pay to get a full version of a game)?
How to revive your Ouya:
Here are the resources I mention in the video:
Ouya World: ouya.world/
Christian Weiske's server & guide: ouya.cweiske.de/
Ouya World Magazine: archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22OuyaFuture+Staff%22
I'm the guy who makes the Ouya Mags. Cheers for the shoutout mate!
Dan! I backed the kickstarter and frankly I think that the Ouya team did everything right .... except figuring out how to keep a revenue stream. I haven't plugged my Ouya in in years but I know exactly where it's at and in the coming weeks I'm going to break it out and see if I can get it going again. Thanks for the video!
super! Definitely going to dig into this. I really enjoyed the Ouya, really liked it's controller too.
If you have a file explorer on your ouya, you can copy and paste the text file for the new store dns from a usb drive to internal storage. A tad bit easier if you’ve never plugged it into your computer.
Ouya can only work for NES to SEGA genesis consoles.
As an Ouya developer who poured 2 years of my life into developing a game for this platform (called “Nub for Ouya”), I’m glad that our work hasn’t gone into an endless oblivion, and reassured that our fans can still get what they paid for 😊
@@randomguydoes2901 In terms of user-count, hemorrhoids are way more popular than the game I made 😅
@@randomguydoes2901 I’m with ya buddy
@@nickbolton9435 thats a sad truth.
i just looked it up, looks fun, isnt Ouya just android based? Couldnt you port it to phones now?
An Ouya developer is just an Android developer, no?
As an an old developer of Ouya games it's amazing to see them working again. Hope people are still enjoying our titles.
@@bWWd0 I'm so confused by this comment lol. I loved my Ouya as a player and as an indie dev.
@@bWWd0 ??
I think I recognize your name. Monster Finger Games? Didn't you guys make a rather well known title for it?
@@bWWd0 fuck off lol. Game preservation is a huge deal right now and the Ouya is an example of that.
@@SockyNoob Hiya, not sure our stuff was that well known if I'm honest lol, but in my opinion the best games we did was Rush Hour Mayhem and Mr Monocles Travels
I'm glad that there's a way around the DRM that keeps people out of their purchases. I really hate this mentality corporations have where customer purchases are dead when the company says so.
People mock the Ouya hardware, but I'm sure plenty of people made purchases that they 100% should access to & shouldn't have to result to cracking to get their games.
It will take a couple of corporations dying an ignominious death at the hands of their customers before the rest of them change tack, let's face it.
I mean we're all used to games as a physical medium that can't be taken away from you unless your house gets robbed, and now we've given up on the idea of a owning a physical object because it's backward and inconvenient, we have to find a way of restoring the inalienable right to use a digital product you have paid for no matter what happens to the company that sold them
@@rorychivers8769 Which you can with pretty much any game now and I bet going forward, it's not hard to get around and systems will be hackable eventually it's only a matter of time.
@@lothar71 Sure, but it still falls short of acknowledgement by the industry that you should be able to use what you paid for no matter what happens.
Toys Я Us went bust, but it didn't suddenly stop my LEGO from working until I found a workaround
I'm glad it's at least legal to crack a game if you have to in order to play it.
I'm not gonna lie. When I first saw the Ouya on store shelves, the idea of a 99 dollar console running a highly moddable OS like Android was almost magical to me at the time. I didn't pull the trigger tho and I felt so bad when I learned how rough things had gone for the little guy, so it makes me so damn happy to see some people getting some use out of them.
I’ve had one since launch and it was quite a decent console. It had cheap/free games so at $100 it was a no brainer.
Took a shot every time Ouya was said and now I'm that pissed I went and bought one
I hope you checked into a hospital for suspected alcohol poisoning and a brain scan to be sure you have one as should anyone else who bought an Ouya.
OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA OUYA
@@Alexander_l322 Hey I like my ouya. It's a good emulator box.
I bought an Ouya in 2013 and wanted to make a game for it since I had used Multimedia Fusion 2 for years and could make Ouya games with the Android exporter. What put me off in the end was frame rate issues I could'nt solve and the tons of shovelware being released for it overall.
I've never thought it's a bad little console but I do wish people didn't keep throwing bad quality games onto the store.
Tho i agree. I kinda like digging through "free" shit to find gems.
Playing knockoff elder scrolls was neat.
There was a mystery game I kept eyes on.
Ironicly the 2 KS games for "Ouya" I funded never released on ouya haha, but on other devices.
The Ouya just didn't really have any games of its own, or any unique IP. Most of the games were just shovelware, bad ports, or knockoffs of games that were already succesful elsewhere.
me and a small team spent many months developing the game "chardor" im glad people can still play some of my old games :)
Gaming companies: Cloud based and "always online" gaming is the future to prevent pirating
Customers: - *pirate games on systems that can no longer be supported* -
They just don't get it, do they? You can't have a non-physical media on a cloud somewhere and tell people it'll never go away.
Mine went into an arcade cabinet full of emulators for my nephews and nieces when I thought it was dead.
I feel a genuine "wow" watching this, even though previously generally unaware of the device being discussed before now.
A lot of people complained about the controllers and especially the lag. I also experienced the lag, but I also figured out is was because of wireless reception. Sometimes I could only get a controller to work good within about 8 feet of the Ouya. Also the system will lag if you are downloading other games in the background.
I bought the Ouya and extra controllers way back when and had a TON of fun in college playing casual games, especially TowerFall and BombSquad. Recently my kids have gotten old enough to learn it and were having a blast until...they uninstalled TowerFall. 😭
This guide gives me hope of getting it back, even if I've lost years of stats (and specifically my character's win ratio 😁).
I wanted to buy a Ouya back in the day to plug into a HD CRT TV that only displayed 480i/p and 1080i. But since the Ouya didn't support 1080i, I decided just to stick with a Xbox 360 since its scaler could output 1080i pretty good. The biggest competition this little cube had was the Raspberry Pi which could be used to learn programming on a cheap little board. In hindsight, the Ouya could be considered the precursor to the Nvidia Shield TV and those Android TV boxes coming from China.
It honestly was. I installed Kodi early on in 2014 or 15 and used it as a tv box up till server shutdown. (Well till kodi unsupported the android version ouya runs)
With retro emulation mixed in.
Got my first OUYA as a present without knowing first what to do with it, but it quickly became a fun obsession of mine, my guilty pleasure. Made lots of videos showing the good and entertaining games and I was always thinking about how to save the library. My OUYAs all worked when the network was gone, but some games couldn't check their license anymore and the turned to trial mode... so I was very happy to be able to perform the hack. My OUYAs are all alive and well and we still enjoy the couch multiplayer games from time to time.
I've still got mine in its box gathering dust (somewhere) so I'll be digging it out and getting it configured! I was gutted that this system didn't catch on but after watching this I feel I'm not alone. Many thanks, Dan. - Dave
I was developing indie games at the time and kickstarted one of the developer tiers planning to make a game for it. When I got the dev unit (mine wasn't delayed) I was so disappointed with the controllers that I hardly played the unit and didn't bother making a game for it. I know they said they were going to improve the controllers but I was so put off that my Ouya journey ended there.
Great because the last thing we needed was another shitty indie game. 👍
@@SVW1976 Oh I still made a game - but for a different platform and it did really well. As for shittiness, well that's in the eye of the beholder 😉
Agreed. The final controller wasn’t much better
@@Auxilla thankfully you could connect other controllers fairly easily.
@@SVW1976 Now that's just not cool. For every indie game that is 'low quality', there's usually one to be found that is a modern classic. Without a vibrant indie scene, we wouldn't have games like Shovel Knight, Rogue Legacy, Pier Solar and the Great Architects, Hades, CrossCode, Timespinner, and many other great games.
I knew I kept my Ouya for a reason. Never played it to be honest, but now I think it's finally time.
I bought into that and due to some damage in shipping wound up with two of them. I eventually got my money back selling the two after the company went down. It was a good idea but also it would have been more fun if just an Android computer so we could just use the Google Play store.
The problem with the ouya, aside from the project looking an awful lot like a money laundering stunt, its 'ceo' being an obvious grifter and the unforgivably stupid name, was the same problem as most single board computers today (such as raspberry pi) .. as a platform for a game console, there is no practical advantage to the formfactor. It's _too_ small for its own good; its size and shape is a gimmick that neuters its performance. Even in 2013, a low powered x86 mini-itx system would run circles around any arm based products. If you're hooking it up to a gigantic TV, why does the system need to be smaller than the controller? It made absolutely no sense.
@@pikachulovesketchup666 don't really understand why you keep calling stuff trash just because it's not computationally powerful lmfao, some of the most fun I've had was playing scummvm games, went back to broken sword yesterday and enjoyed it just as much. Will definitely play Simon the sorcerer again sometime soon.
Even the switch is running on a Tegra btw, but botw is still mechanically better than 100% of the games coming out today and also more appealing to look at than most of them
@@pikachulovesketchup666 Pi is "trash", but it's absurdly inexpensive and competent enough for emulation, which is what mostly used it for when it comes to gaming (not to mention the plethora of useful non-gaming related stuff you can do on it)
I think you miss the point of the pi... it's a computer that can run a full operating system and it costs (for the pi zero) ~£10 and it's low power.
@@pikachulovesketchup666 you do know nintendo switch uses nvidia tegra right
@@thearmyofiron He prob gonna say the switch is trash
My Ouya still has a side-loaded version of android release of Shadowrun (2013) on it, which sadly was pulled from the store a good few years ago. Ran pretty well from what I remember.
do you mean "Shadowrun" or "Shadowgun"? Would be interested in the "Shadowrun" thingly
@@FolkerHQ yeah Shadowrun Returns, the isometric reboot
I remember it having PS6 graphics
Played my OUYA tonight !! Still loving it
I bought one of these not long after the initial release because I thought, with a little work, it could be a really great retro machine. Never got around to that, and other things came along that largely removed the need, but I also never bothered to try and sell it because I figured I'd find something to do with it sooner or later. Thanks for these resources. I may just dig the funny little thing out and give it a go.
Im thinking to buy the xbox one for retro gaming
And just like that, my ouya is working again. My youngest is now playing Minigore 2. Thank you for making a shelf decoration useful again.
I have like three of these in a box labeled “too many Ouyas” 😂
I might have to check this out!
Wanna share lol
Oddly i have 3 as well. Not sure how many work at this point, but i might just dig them out and have a look.
I made a game for OUYA. It was called IronWalker and was definitely an amateur effort but it's the nearest I'll ever get to releasing a game on a 'console' so I was pretty happy.
The Ouya was a fantastic idea but with a delayed and underwhelming implementation.
Back when android was spreading like a wildfire, it was a great idea to make an affordable device that would play android games on TV. Not that there were any good games back then but the Android ecosystem was growing. The problem was that by the time it was released, Sony had announced PS4 and public interest shifted to the new Sony console.
I think what really killed it also came out right with xbox360 and ps3 started. making self publishing way easer. Steam greenlight as well. While when it was announced on ks it was extremly restricted.
I was a KS backer but never really used my Ouya much. Sold it 2 or 3 years ago. Decent piece of kit let down by the its ecosystem.
It’s completely ethical and right that Ouya owners can still download games and use these features. Piracy laws be damned.
Absolutely looking into this. I love my Ouya. Was a backer originally and still regularly play it.
This doesn’t work and I am not sure why he made this video. I tried it several times for hours and got nowhere which brought back all the sadness of them killing off support and breaking all my favorite games.
@@Super_Bros. I got it work almost immediately
@@kylemulkey9659
I’ve tried every listed method including changing my dns…
@@Super_Bros. weird. It worked awesome for me. Are you on the latest firmware version and all that good stuff?
@@kylemulkey9659
I tried to turn on my OUYA just a moment ago and now it won’t even load. So yeah, cheap stuff often goes dead. Maybe it was on its last life last I used it?
I have one of the special edition Kickstarter Ouyas as well as 4 of the custom engraved covers for the remotes. It may not be the most powerful little console, but it is still neat to whip out and play all kinds of neat fun games on it still as well as reasonable emulation. Do wish it had a Tegra 4 rather than the Tegra 3, but eh.
I admittedly found the Ouya to be a joke, but it’s pretty cool that there were people who weren’t gonna let it go to waste and found legitimate uses despite it failing it its original purpose. Stuff like this is always commendable and I’m here for it.
I still love this little guy. I actually have two of them. One at my house, one in my rv. It's a great little, one-stop-shop for everything media in my RV when I'm traveling, whether it's watching movies, playing games, or flipping through pics and videos I took that day while sight seeing. I also love that the community has kept it alive. There were alot of fun little indy gems out there.
"its a 2013 spec tablet or phone"
Ouya: 4x cortex A9, 1GB ram, usb2, 8-16GB storage
2012 Galaxy S3: 4x cortex A9, 1GB ram, usb2, 16-64GB storage (+microSD)
2013 Galaxy Note3: 4x Cortex A15, 3GB ram, usb3, 16-64GB storage (+microSD)
It's a 12 month old phone at launch.
My biggest gripe with the console is the weak signal strength between the console and the controller. Random amount of input delay, sudden loss of connection at all and interference when using two or more controllers made it completely pointless for any form of "serious" gaming. Try 1CC-ing a shmup or have any sort of competition on there and the crappy input signal will drive you nuts. And I tried ALL the workarounds... I put it on its side, I sat no more than one feet away, I made sure no other devices were close, I soldered an extra piece of antenna to the controller circuit board, I updated its firmware, I tried both my launch controllers and the later revisions, even recieving one directly from the fellas from Ouya. Nothing made it even slightly better. A crying shame!
I was one of the unlucky few that had wifi problems. Sold it shortly after because I couldn’t even download games
I have a limited edition white OUYA. I use it often and everything on it works. All of the installed software works. All of the games run. All the emulators work. It won't give you any problems about being connected to the web until you try to connect it. And honestly why are you trying to connect it when you know the server is 100% off line?
Oh this is awesome, I was a big supporter of the Ouya. The fact it's back to being usable again is AWESOME! I'm going to have to do all these updates.
2:29 Correction: As you can see in the video, there is only one USB port on the back of the Ouya. The other one is HDMI.
The hugely obvious thing that originally killed the Ouya was that it had no access to the Google Play Store (or Amazon Appstore I guess if you must). When it came out without that massive library of Android games that people already played on phones/tablets, I instantly knew it was doomed.
Valve did exactly the same thing with their Steam Machines (limited native-only Linux library), but compounded it by only having third parties manufacture the hardware (so it was inevitably overpriced because OEMs couldn't sell them as loss leaders as they didn't get a 30% game cut like Valve did). At least the Steam Deck corrects this and that's why I've reserved one.
A bit surprised that the resurrected Ouya store with free downloads of commercial games hasn't had a legal challenge about this from at least one Ouya developer. Maybe it has and they've pulled games where such objections have been raised? It's most likely to happen where the game is still a paid one and actively developed on the Google Play Store.
Great video, nice to see my terrible game in the magazine again. Rerez did a video slamming the console 2 months ago and you could clearly see he'd connected to the new server to download the games. No mention of the community and the latest game jams though. Just jumped on the bandwagon of "it was a massive failure". Unless you actually sit down with the console and play some of the strange and interesting titles that released you won't get anything out of your time
I also have an Ouya. I'll have to give this a try.
Great video! Never bought the Ouya as I already had my eyes set on getting the Shield Portable.
Never thought I'd get to use an OUYA console until this video has perked my interest .. perhaps just like the C64, older consoles will indeed experience a 'revolution'! The OUYA box wasn't lying! :D
Brilliant post Dan. Always great to see a potential use and revival for an "old" lol, system
9:05 That's actually a micro usb jack/cable, not a mini.
So much hype on the Ouya still remember Rich from Review Tech USA going on about it
Glad it’s still got a use in 2022 and games are still available cheers Dan
SKIBIDDI BUP BUM BADUP
Id be as likely to attempt to start my own airline as I would to create my own games console. Just too difficult, too expensive to make work and too much well established competition. Wouldnt go near the idea.
I think this console gets shot of unfair flack. While it's somewhat a business failure
they designed a console and made it to production. I actually think it's a nice design and it was an inspiring concept. It seems very easy to criticize the misteps of others these days. They tried something new, something different and I think that in itself is worthy of praise.
Exactly
First Kickstarter I supported and got the Bonze founders version. I would call it a failure as it didn't do what it was designed to do. With that said it did much more then it was supposed to do and mine got lots of use. Today people wonder why anybody would want this with Raspberry Pi and all the Android Boxes available, back then they were not as well known as they are today. Mine was much like this video, a file server for videos and Kodi and emulators. I enjoyed it so much i picked up several when people were dumping them for $5-10 each and setup them up for people i knew, a few are still being used today. I have moved to a tiny windows server to replace it , but it was great for the 2-3 years I used it.
People fail to realize just how shitty the Raspberry Pi was to use back then. And all these emulation handhelds and boxes just weren't much of a thing back then.
this video just got me playing my Ouya again! thank you so much..
Fascinating stuff. It's also timely with the recent news about Nintendo closing the Wii U and 3DS eShops - games that could disappear forever without preservation or sideloading/emulation. In some ways the Ouya was lucky and unlucky with its timing. The recent rush of emulation boxes tends to suggest it was onto something.
I still love my OUYA - it's so much fun to just mess with emulators on it
I mean the Shield Tv Pro was basically like the Ouya if it was actually kind of good
Was cleaning up and found my Ouya in a box. Thanks for the video!
Neat. I might have to try this out since I did an "offline patch" in 2019 and this looks cool.
Your windows must be magical because mine doesnt show up OUYA. did you instal a driver ? do you need to plug the power cable also? I tried both.
Excellent - thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I had found a set of games somewhere on the web which I had downloaded for the future but this is a much better solution. I have packed up my OUYA but it's in it's original box with power supply and cables ready to go at any time. Keep up the good work on The Retro Hour. Loved the recent Christmas Quiz.
A shame it was so overhyped, people literally believed they'd get a $100 console that was equal to the xbox and the play station when in reality it was just an android box with some low quality controllers.
Nowadays we're spoiled for choice for ARM+android devices... I got rid of my Ouya once I realized the awful controller lag was a hardware issue and not something that could be fixed with a software update. It could have been really great, though.
i'm glad poor ouya-tan had a happy ending at least
Enjoyed the video- I hope the Ouya lives on for many years- will have to check out the online game server. :)
Mate your timings mint. Just got our hands on one of these 👍
Followed the instructions and it worked perfect feels like time travel back to 2013😁
Just saw this and now I’m digging for my Ouya
I always liked my ouya and was very disappointed I could no longer play the games I bought.
For sure will give this a go. But I do now have a Pi 400 and really love the spectrum oric feel of the thing, like going back in time!
Who remembers the game stick?
Oh a further worth while footnote for this video. At the time Razor took over, they started work on the ForgeTV, that was supposed to be a updated Ouya with access to Google store and Cortex and such. They even gave Ouya console owners a store credit to get it at a discount. I was swayed enough to buy the device. However I quickly returned it, since any of the rooting type stuff was completely removed, and even though you had access to the Ouya store, it was highly filtered with only a handful of games accessible, and no save transfers at all from the Ouya.
I enjoyed my years of owning an ouya, many people looked at it as a failed console but it was one of the first big android tv boxes and if you used it like one it was very good, the tegra 3 was overclocked and gave enough cpu power to even emulate the dreamcast back in 2014! it failed because it was looked at as a 4th games console.
Bro Ouya was a fucking Rasberry Pi device. Mobiles phones were faster than this piece of junk. It was android console. Stop with this already
@@ClipahoyFor real dude?!! I had no idea that the console based on Android and a mobile phone chip had phones faster than it! You gonna tell me next that there's laptops faster than the one in my living room right now?
My favorite thing about the Ouya was the indie multiplayer games like Hidden in Plain Sight. Still love the two Towerfall games. Plugged it in a few days ago and the games still worked, I'll be applying the fix you mention to keep it going longer. While real gamers may complain about the console for a casual gamer like myself it was good enough, especially at the $99 price point.
Bomb squad:) still one of my fav multiplier games that I found on it. And its controller compatibility was just awesome.
I loved the idea of that console and was massively disappointed by the controller and it's input lag. Not to mention the WiFi that was slow as hell.
I’ve never owned an Ouya, but I’ve heard that there was even a game that recommended using a PS3 controller to fix the controller lag or something lol. Really sucks people had to deal with that, because the idea of this little console was pretty awesome at the time.
@@NijiDash yeah I really liked the idea an design of that console. The onlinestore was ok for that time. It had so much great ideas.
Ace video Dan. Coincidentally I found my ouya just the other day! Time for a revival.
Fun video, thanks! Personally my media streaming PC, also running this type of simpler games is about the same size (it is a Chuwi LarkBox Pro), or perhaps even smaller than the Ouya.
"You have a relationship with the television"
I purchased the ouya specifically to be a very tidy and easy to use emulator box that did not require a keyboard or mouse to use at ANY time in its life. It provided this exactly as I wanted. So I consider the console a success.
I don't want any junk getting in between me and the game. I just want the TV, the controller in my hand, and the game. That's it. Nothing else. The ouya did this nicely.
Awesome video! I bought and ouya and and extra controller the day it launched. I still have it and I think I'll have to bring it back out
This is great, worked like a charm! This vid made me brush the dust off my old OUYA. Nice to have "the store" available again! I also have many emulators on it that I run from the "Nostalgia" front-end. These factors combined, makes this a little box for hours of fun!
Hi, when I plug the usb in my pc, the ouya device doesn't show up. ??
@@tgsweets Did you power the ouya? It needs it's seperate power cable, it wont get it from the usb.
Finally a reason to dust off my Ouya! Haven't powered it on once ever since I bought it when it launched.
I lost mine sadly.
Shame on you! At least I turned mine on long enough to confirm it’s a horrible experience.
If the controller was at least useable then it may have had a chance… oh well.
I quite liked my Ouya. It is now a showpiece too in my room.
Great video Dan. I have my fingers crossed you'll make some more Commodore videos, however!
Finally! A purpose for my OUYA! Thank you for bringing this to our attention. :)
TOWERFALL CAME FROM OUYA WHAT???
This fix will finally bring life back to the good old Ouya!
Thank you for making this video. I literally found this system in my closet and was about to throw it out but decided to check youtube to see if there was any use for it now. Found your video and now i'm going to keep it and use it!
I tried updating mine three days before the servers went down, now it has graphical glitches at the start and no longer works, can't even get to the splash screen. Maybe the community can help out some day
Did any money go missing or was the entirety spend on the project.
Great vid Dan
I quite like the ouya. It's a good small little box.
I'm a simple man. I see Zool, I upvote.
How does it compare to a Raspberry PI?
I recently picked up and assembled a PICADE with a raspberry PI 4B running Retropi. I'm loving it so far.
Odds are that any modern Raspberry Pi can blow the Ouya out of the water, when it comes to processing power and practical performance. The Raspberry Pi will also have the advantage of being a more open-ended system.
As far as I can tell, no one has gotten the Ouya OS, or the third-party Ouya servers, to work on a Raspberry Pi. People have gotten Android to work on the Raspberry Pi, and there are open-source gaming projects that can work on it. For example, people have gotten Half-Life to work on the Raspberry Pi. People have also used x86 emulation to run Steam, and some 2D indie games run fairly well, through Steam.
I bought one since it wasn't that expensive but I never actually bought a game for it. I knew if the servers ever went down I would be SOL and sure enough they did. I did have some of the emulators on there and I personally found they didn't work that well. Maybe they got updated later on but N64 didn't work at all and even NES/SNES had alot of input lag.
I might have to give this a go one day looks pretty interesting. Still don't think it will replace my Raspberry pi 4 though.
I was one of the original backers. I think my experience summarized some of the problems they had. Originally I payed for one console and 4 controller (one was included so +3) and yes I was worry because it took forever to get to me. Once it actually did I actually what I god was 2 console and 7 or 8 controller. I don’t know how such an error was made but if I wasn’t the only one that could make them run out of money pretty fast.
Bit of a warning on the reliance of online servers in order to play games you paid for. Anything you buy online should be made drm free when servers go offline.
Great but if the company is going under how exactly are they supposed to pay for the servers to download the games from?
@@blunderingfool Not sure what you mean? People who have bought the game would have already downloaded them. They only need to release a patch to remove drm for their games.
I was one of the people that never got my OUYA (though I vaguely remembering that I did get my 2nd controller). It wasn't until 2 years ago when a friend and colleague was "Hey I got this, but I never use it, do you want it?" as he knew I had been purchasing old consoles that I had never got to play as a child (don't worry, I had a PC and played plenty of games). It wasn't until after we learned that the services had shutdown and that the device was essentially a brick. Still, I'm fairly certain I never threw it away. Who knows, maybe I'll dig it up and, for the first time ever, I'll press the power button of an OUYA (even though I was a backer xD)
I'm going to check this out. Thanks!
The worst thing about it imo was the input lag (especially of the original controller). I used it without the enclosure, since that somewhat reduced the lag. I still liked it though, and wished it would have become successful.
What about re-flashing/re-purposing your Ouya as an open Android TV box?!?! Has anyone done that?
Ouya's are now more expensive than original XD
I think there's actually been some mainline Linux kernel work, if I remember correctly? It's either that or postmarketOS is working on it, or some other project. There's definitely some work being done.
They have this cool thing now called the "Google Chromecast with Google tv" where I can play literally every retro Nintendo and Sega game known to existence with an 8 bit do Bluetooth controller.
If you can download the full priced commercial games for free now, then what about the microtransactions (such as when you have to pay to get a full version of a game)?
This is really cool, well done to the people giving this box a second chance. =)