Gadgetory

welcome to top shelf I'm David Pierce and on this show we bring you the best in consumer electronics past present and future this week a new wave of gaming platforms we've said it before that this is truly the year of the hardware startup the baby shows in tech CES South by Southwest and last week's Game Developers Conference have been dominated by upstart companies who aren't making apps or software but are building tangible and sometimes wearable projects Kickstarter is obviously a catalyst for all of this the platform has helped to finance everything from the pebble smartwatch to the upcoming oculus rift virtual reality headset one of Kickstarter's biggest success stories isn't just trying to build a gadgets though they're trying to build an ecosystem for decades your living room has been ruled by just a handful of gaming companies like Nintendo Sony and Microsoft now via and devices like in videos project shield and arguably even the steam box are vying to break up this tradition of three Booya is a $99 console built on crowd-sourced funding in the Android operating system it's now shipping to about 60,000 of those early backers and will soon hit retail stores like Best Buy and Target in June our own editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky was one of those early backers so I stole his idea to see how a great idea turns into a real-world product who was really one of the earliest Kickstarter success stories the company met its goal in 8 hours and raised more than eight and a half million dollars for was ultimately a really simple purpose bringing all the new innovative games that are being developed for mobile platforms back to the TV for $99 we have pre-sold a box but also an open platform and an invitation to developers to create fun games for the big screen again now nine months later he is starting to ship to the more than 60,000 people who backed its Kickstarter campaign ours appears in something like a shoebox and you almost wouldn't know there's a gaming console in there the actually is about the shape of a Chinese food takeout container it's a slightly deformed silver and black cube with a glowing ghoulia logo on the top there's a power jack on the back plus all the ports you'll need to connect it to the internet and your TV it's nice looking without being particularly remarkable de is designed to be super hackable even it's hardware you can open it up and see what's inside with just a screwdriver and the company even gives you the blueprints to 3d print your own case it's all very nerdy really inside the GUI is basically an Android from there's a Tegra 3 processor and a gig of ram and the whole thing is based on Android 4.1 jelly beans but of course this isn't an Android phone it's an Android console whatever that means one thing it does mean is that the Ouya comes with a wireless controller a gray and black thing about the size and weight you'd expect it is all the usual controls 2 analog sticks triggers and bumpers a d-pad and the standard four buttons we had decided that instead of having a B X&Y though they've used oh u Y and a which is just insanely confusing a is where B normally is U is x o is a why is y at least so that's something there's even a touchpad in the middle like the PlayStation 4s controller but this one you mostly just use to Mouse around the interface when the d-pad doesn't work quickly it's a decent Bluetooth controller even if it does feel a little cheap and plasticky in places and some of the buttons feel a little mushy and uncomfortable there are lots of other controllers you can use with you like the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 controller but you have to root to use the best of them and that's really a whole different subject from a hardware perspective do use a decent first effort it's nice looking pretty minimalist and at least feels worth it's $99 price tag let's be honest none of that really matters what matters is how it games so how does it game so at this point I've kind of spent a lot of time with Yui and I have lots of thoughts and opinions but I want to see what somebody else thought so I brought Ross Miller hi Ross so to basically just go nuts with the Ouya and somehow you ended up here what what is this game I'm doing this game is called the ball and I was very intrigued by obviously the the great name to it no I'm sorry you know mysterious I will say it looks good it does look I'm surprised my favorite part of it though it was like there's three buttons there is push the ball there is pull the ball and in my favorite there is look at the ball yes right there if you did it I can get anywhere I can do anything I want and then I hit the I guess the Y button and then it's fine it's it's you know it's one of those kind of like puzzle game it's not a big deal it does show that it is capable of a pretty decent 3d game and yes so this is the basis the weird stick of this thing to me and tell me if you've seen the same thing they have a bunch of games I think it's like a hundred games or something right now and most of them you've poked around a little bit most of them are super basic right there not only ports of android games but ports of like really simple really low and android games I mean that's the thing like this is launching with a pretty sizable like number of games it's not quantity its quality there's something I would say that really stands out right there flagship game is Final Fantasy 3 which was a which was a cool game like 25 years it's that or it's you know it's cannibals which is just a fun little game to run around with I mean she's also like it's and it's a fun game and it's not bammy the Xbox 360 flex she gave me to argue with was galaxy war it was simple it was colorful of you I had a good time playing cannibal is the same way that being said we've played Final Fantasy 3 before we played Mega Ball before I mean it's it's interesting that it's here but we're still at the point where like it feels kind of like a glorified tech demo in hardware right and so this was the this was the weird thing to me as I've been playing through it and we've just been messing around side loading games and so leah has their own separate store they have a whole different way for bringing apps into their ecosystem they're enforcing it you have to have free apps you can't charge people for downloads and so they don't have Google Play but they're constantly upselling you and let's let's not forget I was learning this earlier and I bought the full version cannibal I don't know how much I just still don't I got an email receipt a minute ago that I still don't know how much look I'm terrified to look at how much $20 game I was in thousands of dollars no and I mean like but like it's unfortunate it's not clear this menu system is unfortunately vague so there are there are a couple of different ways to get games on right so there's the way hooya wants you to do it or the easiest way on here which is their store they have kind of a discover away and I have a neat way of actually bringing up interesting games that makes it so that they're doing it by engagement so like if a lot of people play a game it rises up and more people get access to it um but they also they have this big thing about being hacker friendly which is sort of true you can like open up the box here and get inside this is basically just like a smartphone inside here so you can get in and hack around and play around yeah it's nice but you can also they have emulators which let you play you know Super Nintendo and 64 games emulators themselves actually come in the store so you can really easily download a bunch of roms and throw them on a USB stick and stick it in here that's awesome yeah but then where this would be really really cool is if you could actually play like these really great games that are on Android Android has all these cool games like shadow gun which we're playing right now right and you just can't play them on here like we figured out a way to sideload them but it involved we had to go and download a file browser and then we like stumbled into it after hours of looking and then every its AirDroid and this the other thing is to like it doesn't always work to like write try shadow going doesn't work every single time you pick it up Netflix seem to have a few issues to yeah I mean it's an open platform but it's also not a supported / platform it seems well right and all of these things like shadow gun I've paid for shadow gun like 40 or 50 times but today to do it now is you're either you know conning Google out of a licensing fee by going and get the Play Store and doing it that way right or you're illegally ASIC essentially pirating these apps and the thing that kills me is like there's no good reason I can't just get shadow gun no on this site I would gladly pay for it I would I want to play it on my TV it looks great on the TV but but it's just not there and like I don't know how it gets there and you're looking that's what does it take here's the super interesting about Android it's a platformer but it's a platformer with other ecosystems on top of it there's a Google Play Store it is always like people complain and criticize it for being almost too open like you don't know what to get it's a giant wealth of apps and you have these people who are building stores on top of it Amazon most famously Tegra zone if you have a compatible device which is by the way it says yes India is another app ecosystem the idea is to curate I guess it's kind of wide like the heavy bright voting these games up we want to show the best and we want to curate to this audience the almost a platform within a platform sure and and we've you know seen there are a lot of different people trying to create these different platforms but for like does this can this work like what does it take for them to get to the point where can they get around having the Play Store and still be successful selling me a hundred hour game console like do they have to go get everything else because that seems a lot harder than just like I could buy an Android phone and plug it into my TV and that would work like what's the why why I mean an Android phone like who is going to do that who's gonna grab their Android phone and think great I can put three wires into it and I'll have a decent experience and it feels a little tethered I'm like the matrix do it no no maybe this is like it's sold to consumers as sit down play some games enjoy yourself it's only 100 bucks the problem is you nee an Xbox for like maybe $200 even much better array of games right it's not as small I mean this is adorable but like you're basically selling a dream and the first 60,000 people have gotten this the Kickstarter back you know these Kickstarter backers this is the dream realized this is not one of the normal console makers they're trying something new they're breaking out and it feels open the problem is but that's thing I'm not going to ask this is the dream being realized I'd like if this were the dev kit if booyah was sending this out to all of the people who wanted to develop apps for it and being like here's some great games it works mess around figured out and we're gonna launch with tons more apps and more games and more stuff you can do like that would be great but people who like this is Josh to Polsky's he bought this he backed them on Kickstarter and got this Josh as far as I know doesn't want to build a game he wants to play a games and right now out of work clearly has a lot of hello is a fair point but he just wants to play games and for right now it's this isn't a good gaming platform it's a fun way to like mess around and it's easier to route and get inside but like my dad is not gonna want to do that he just wants to sit down and play maybe my dad's into shadow gun shadow gun but yeah but he can't right and so like I guess hopefully they get there maybe eventually over time but I feel like if I'm one of the 60,000 people who already bought one of these I'm just now sort of crossing my fingers that my hundred dollars eventually becomes worth it even though like I have a thing but it doesn't seem like it's worth here's here's the thing like that bothers me the most there are two like two people need to worry about the people who bought the dream who know it's a Kickstarter thing it's not gonna be fully realized like you buy a pebble smartwatch earlier you've got it doesn't do everything it was promised but it gets something and you get to like it feel like you're a part of something you visited this is it okay if you're making stuff like you're gonna have a good time with this if you're playing you're getting the portal experience like you're just going to the Ouya portal you're getting that these games it's not much there we have a lot of support we've yet to see it realized and that's a problem and this is coming to retail what early June 4th you yes I hope there's a lot more there to see cuz hope so too it's not gonna be a good first impression you come out the box and you get a free version cannibal that charges you god knows what to play the second level or whatever and they owe them my life now it's possible I don't have a home innings that's that's the thing so I mean it's it's a great idea it's happy it's open but this isn't the dream realized yeah and it does feel like the beginning across the whole thing like this interface here is sort of nice but there's some messy stuff and even like little animations are really clunky which just doesn't work at all I do like that we have this controller which I actually kind of like in some ways it's not bad it has a front touchpad that's very like you know you know hello ps4 right it's basically and it's sort of layers cuz it's like you for the most part can use the controller and then every once in a while it just breaks down and doesn't work anymore and then you're like oh well you have a trackpad just use that and this if you are a nerd if you like this kind of stuff you're going to enjoy this right but this is gonna be invest buy for $100 in June and they have a long way to go before I tell you in June to buy it for even at $100 I don't know maybe that's just me but again it's open it's great but I mean like it's again that there's no Netflix there's no place for Minecraft or whatever I mean well so minecraft is actually kind of a great example of all this right as minecraft is both an app that something like ooh yo really means like I would imagine there are a lot of people white whatever so minecraft is something like on Ouya if this were $100 and it were a great minecraft machine for your TV people would buy that that would be exciting and if it were the same for you know a lot of other games but they have it's called xbox welfare and minecraft is also kind of this platform that has built a whole world on top of itself right like it started as a game and it became this thing that people build houses on and they build their own games on and they do all kinds of such mechanic you can't break things like that in Minecraft though so it's yes you can yes anyway though but I mean is it fair to say that that's kind of a what somebody like who you should be looking to as like how do we build a real community around this and make it a viable company I don't know what the answer is like I don't like that it's it's almost a paradox we weren't open like so we can do whatever we want with it but we also want curated so we know what's good so it's like right you have a store that's awesome and like you find great things and that's what 19 hours and the people do or the 90% that people do and the other 10% like you can just do what you want right making that balance like apples went one way and roids a hole went the other and no one's quite happy yet so he is really digging into that 10% I guess for now and I guess maybe they never get out of that but like minecraft made it work by getting to just that 10% but the thing is if you want a viable platform you've got to make it happy for anyone who doesn't just want to create like they just want to experience with other people create right so we actually at GDC this past week had a chance to talk to Markus Persson the who's not and like teachers legally change his name notch is a way better name but so we had a chance to talk to him at GDC about Minecraft and all of this building a platform and how to really be successful in kind of this indie video game world and we talked to him about what's coming up next what he's up to and how indie hardware fits into gaming from now on I'm TC Sadiq with the verge and I'm here at GDC 2013 I'm sitting on a white couch somewhere in the future the future of gaming I'm joined by Markus Persson you might know better is not the creator of Minecraft thanks for joining us Oh likes that with us so GDC is a lot about the future of gaming you know you had EA introduced battlefield 4 here this week which was unusual but the story has really been a lot about indie games free games casual games what do you think that says about the industry in 2013 that's such a focus I think it's it's a it's to me it gives me hope for the future because kind of gaming goes in trends and for a bit for too long stretch it was a focus on the huge productions of kind of play ones games that they only played at one time and they had huge budgets and now that games are getting a little bit smaller young I think day we can get some more experimental games going you you're you got minecraft on the Xbox 360 which was kind of a feat do you think minecraft would have existed at all if you hadn't tried to go directly to console from the beginning no definitely not it's the game was kind of - out there - to be kind of friend want to have a like backbone like that um you know obviously Xbox Playstation Nintendo aren't the only platforms coming out booyah for example which you're gonna have your name etched on when it comes out it's gonna be is getting a lot of momentum why did you back that project basically because I think the more consoles the better because if there's no competition then it might get more open seems like cosel's are getting more open which is really cool and yeah you've been kind of a big presence on Kickstarter you know funding great projects what do you think about Kickstarter in terms of the future of game development do you think it's the industry is gonna shift towards that kind of model being the primary way that games get funded and developed I kind of hope not because it's very front loader the consumers take all the risk which is not really nice to consumers I think the main benefits is that smaller studios who want to do something slightly larger get some initial funding and that we can have larger studios develop games internally without having get publisher money so they can focus more in actual quality of the game so it's more directed to the fans of the genre you are Minecraft obviously started on the PC and you've made some disparaging comments about where Windows is headed Windows 8 in particular and infamously you refused to certify minecraft for Windows 8 so what do you think about valve steam box and kind of the push towards Linux as a as a gaming operating system I have like this yearly ritual cannabidiol try to install Linux to try to use it it never really takes and it never really works for me some reason I think if Linux gets to the point where it's actually like more consumer-friendly than Windows then that would be really really good are you gonna continue to develop for Windows then in the meantime and not focus on Linux at all or are you gonna try to do things in parallel I think we're gonna try to make sure that what we do is kind of cross-platform so that they get kind of desktop version it's not Linux Windows and Mac there's also a lot of excitement you know beyond consoles about new ways of interacting with with games you new peripherals we have leap motion coming out we have new virtual reality stuff Gabe Newell has talked a lot about biometric feedback and what are you as a developer most excited about what you want to get your hands on for me right now it's the oculus rift definitely it's I I kind of was one of those kids growing up to hope that the yard will become a Fame and then you got to try that we're shooting dinosaurs games without possibly the horrible death on nightmare and yes but with oculist actually kind of passes a threshold of being not good to actually being good we're kind of the more use the MOR reverse immersive gets and you you were one of the first to receive an early kid right now so you've been playing around with it a lot yeah I mean minecraft is coming to the rip sooner that's that's a up to gents I try to leave those decision saying but I have been trying to play around with make adding oculus rift support to the dominating libraries well I could have been to lace it actually do they're actually have a lifting of it but it's kind of iPad product in office at the moment Mojang is being now minecraft is huge do you still feel like an indie developer no not in the last service it depends on what you mean by in the developer I mean we are independent they owned and we tried to make the games we want to make for the sake of making from games and not necessarily just to make a profit but we're for me in the game developer more meals like the garage developer someone's sitting at home just making games that'll cure passion and then that sense that no we're not really in there so garage developers that are working now I mean knowing what you know what would you tell them if they're starting out today they're making the next Minecraft from their from their bedroom I think it's just make games for yourself and try to have a critical eye to what you do so don't just make something and kind of pat yourself on the back but actually try to look at what it is and how it works and why it doesn't work and what works in it right than that but if you yourself genuinely like the game that there's gonna be other people who like it as well thank you so much Marcus thank you that's our show thanks so much for watching thanks to TC Sadiq notch and Ross Miller for being here for lots more on Leah and the whole new indie gaming phenomenon be sure and check out the verge calm thank you so much for watching we'll see you next week you