OUYA beaten by phones in benchmark tests

OUYA was among a variety of Android devices in benchmark testing, and finished behind several existing Android devices.

22

OUYA consoles have been shipping to Kickstarter backers, giving tech fans a chance to try it out for themselves. And what's one of the first things people do with new gadgets? Benchmarks, of course. Pitted against other Android devices, it came in strong for the price but finished behind some existing phones and tablets.

FutureMark (via GI.biz) rated various Android devices, including smartphones, tablets, and the OUYA console. Of the 258 devices it rated, the OUYA came in at 73rd. That puts it behind many newer devices like the HTC One, LG Nexus 4, some Samsung Galaxy, and Sony Xperia devices. However, do note that the device is only $99, while most phones go for more than six times as much when unlocked and unsubsidized. With its ARM A9 chip, it's on par with the similarly equipped HTC One X+.

The console recently met with some criticism upon reaching Kickstarter backers. It is set to launch formally on June 4.

Editor-In-Chief
Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    April 16, 2013 10:05 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, OUYA beaten by phones in benchmark tests.

    OUYA was among a variety of Android devices in benchmark testing, and finished behind several existing Android devices.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 10:18 AM

      Ouch

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 10:21 AM

      That's pretty...sad? Then again, it's cheap, but "Who is the real target audience?" is what I'm wondering.

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 10:33 AM

        people who didnt know any better. thats their target audience. i feel real good about cancelling my kickstarter pledge

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 11:53 AM

          Clearly you're the one who didn't know any better. The Tegra 3 and 1GB RAM is the specs of a Nexus 7 tablet. That was the performance that was expected.

          Some idiots (you) thought it would perform better than that for some reason.

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 1:16 PM

            ^ Ouya fanboy gettin mad.

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 2:05 PM

            They were claiming that the device would run faster than most devices on the market because they would be able to "overclock" the arm processor since they didn't have to worry about battery life. There was a lot of false claims mostly made by the fans and some by the manufacture themselves.

            That said there is room for underpowered consoles if there are quality games. There as of this moment hardly any Ouya exclusives or enhanced games. Most of which are games you can get on any Android phone/tablet. That is partially why the hardware is getting reviewed. If they had exclusives that were good people wouldn't care about the specs.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 10:44 AM

      This isn't bad news, this is just news made to look like bad news. It's a Tegra 3 chipset. It's faster than the Tegra 3 chipset in the Nexus 7 and Asus Transformer, which is what it was supposed to do. On top of this it's A) proprietary, so software can be optimized specifically for the ouya hardware, and B) the OS still has a huge way to go before it's optimized properly. I'm not an ouya fanboy by any means, and don't really want one, but don't be calling out the whole "well, that new EVO is not quite as fast as the new PORCHE" aregument.

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 11:26 AM

        BEHOLD, THE POWER OF A CELL PHONE CPU TO PLAY GAMES ON YOUR TV SET!

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 11:53 AM

          Cell phones are already more powerful than PS2's, so what's your point?

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 11:58 AM

            PS2 - 32mb RAM
            Vita - 512mb RAM
            Ouya - 1GB RAM, Tegra 3 ($99 at launch, runs on TV)
            Nexus 7 - 1GB RAM, Tegra 3 ($199 at launch in 2012)

            And many more tablets/phones that are more powerful than those...

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 12:07 PM

            Too bad their games are still shittier, maybe that's his point.

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 1:12 PM

            It's already more powerful than a decade old console? Well gee golly mister!

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 10:46 AM

      OH YEAH?

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 10:49 AM

      How much do those phones cost?

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 10:50 AM

        Several times what the Ouya costs, but that's not exactly the point, there's a lot of other stuff going against it as well.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 11:34 AM

      Ouya maker should have just went ahead with a Tegra 4 chip for finalized specs, and shipped out Tegra 3 for development boxes.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 12:01 PM

      Gaming news websites coverage of these stories have been embarrassing. I mean for the journalists/sites, not for the OUYA. An insane lack of knowledge is apparent from all the major gaming sites. How long until we actually have a mature gaming media that have a clue what they're talking about??

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 12:06 PM

        How so? Any reviewer worth his salt will evaluate the device as a console gaming medium in comparison to existing products. That means it will be compared to the xbox 360 and PS3. A consumer doesn't think to himself "Wow! This thing sucks. But it has a Tegra 3 GPU so I guess it's awesome after all!"

        The end user does not give a fuck about what's inside of it, they only care about the experience. Apparently, that experience is not going to be a good one.

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 12:19 PM

          I mean they don't seem to have a clue about hardware. They also don't understand any technical info about game engines or how games are made, but that's unrelated to this.

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 12:32 PM

            Again, why the fuck should a reviewer or end-user care about the hardware? Or the software creation process? An end user doesn't automatically give a console device leeway just because it has a weak processor. Similarly, an end user doesn't forgive a game for being bad because of a convoluted software creation process. They only care about the end result.

            They care about the experience and nothing else. Period. If the tegra 3 isn't up to snuff to provide a good gaming experience, Ouya's creators should have had the foresight to use something better.

            • reply
              April 16, 2013 1:17 PM

              They are doing annual releases with updated hardware, so why should they? This is a budget console with backwards compatibility of the game library.

            • reply
              April 16, 2013 1:19 PM

              They should've never even talked about Tegra 3, Tegra 4 should've been it for this thing when it was announced.

              • reply
                April 16, 2013 4:53 PM

                Yeah, I thought that was a bizarre decision.

                • reply
                  April 16, 2013 9:42 PM

                  Not that bizarre when the Ouya always came across like just another commodity y Android pump and dump scam on Kickstarter (of which there had been several). Any Tegra always seemed like a bad choice for anything that was seriously about games. Their GPUs have, ironically, always been far worse than contemporary devices using Mali or PowerVR tech. So Tegra 3 seemed pretty crap a year ago, it's not surprising it gets blown away a year later once they've actually started shipping hardware.

              • reply
                April 17, 2013 1:25 AM

                The Ouya only costs $50, plus a $50 controller. They use tegra3 because it's cheap, and it's cheap because it's crappy. They couldn't have used tegra4 and got the $99 price tag they were shooting for.

            • reply
              April 17, 2013 6:20 AM

              If they don't care about hardware why are they reporting on benchmarks?

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 1:14 PM

            It's like you didn't even read the post you replied to.

            • reply
              April 16, 2013 1:27 PM

              Let me introduce st4rdog, Ouya President and CEO.

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 2:24 PM

        Do tech blogs and gaming sites even count as journalism? They're basically spoon-fed their stories from other blogs, Twitter, and press releases.

        How often does one of these sites actually break a story and not just post "news" fed to them by PR reps for big companies?

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 2:28 PM

          Penny Arcade Report does a fair number of them, I would say Gamasutra probably does too but I'm not sure that counts as much.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 12:27 PM

      I never really found a real niche for this to pique my interests. It's a novel idea but has found no place in the market to settle.

      I think at best I might use it as a XMBC media player. That's a big maybe for me though.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 1:16 PM

      lol at people who expected anything better than this

      • reply
        April 16, 2013 1:28 PM

        I don't get it. People pay 60 bucks a year for Xbox live. What if Microsoft offered a subscription model for a console where you get a new console every year with updated hardware? Now on top of it being 100 bucks a year, all/most games bought in the eco system would work on newer models. This thing is competing with a set top box and a cell phone graphic power-wise / life cycle-wise for way less than the price of a cell phone. How could any gamer not be excited for that? I'm just excited to play indie casual games on a big screen from my couch without hooking up a dedicated PC that costs several times more.

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 2:09 PM

          I'd rather have the dedicated PC that costs more and not get a new model every year and play AAA games as well as Indy games.

          • reply
            April 16, 2013 8:51 PM

            So you'd rather buy a new graphic card every year or every couple of years that also costs more?

            • reply
              April 17, 2013 12:46 AM

              When you sell the old card and get a new one it doesn't add up to all that much.

        • reply
          April 16, 2013 4:22 PM

          I dunno, because they have a cell phone and get the new ones anyway, and because they also have a PC?

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 1:44 PM

      It's been hilarious following the terrible launch of this piece of shit on the something awful boards.

    • reply
      April 16, 2013 9:58 PM

      Someone created a game entirely out of stolen assets and submitted it to the OUYA store and it was approved.

      http://youtu.be/PcJYHXp1ZTE

      • reply
        April 17, 2013 1:44 AM

        Hasn't that also happened in multiple established app stores?

      • reply
        April 17, 2013 3:06 AM

        But who the fuck would pay for this game????????

    • reply
      April 17, 2013 7:58 AM

      Hopefully it'll help a bit that Ouya doesn't have to run phone-related stuff in the background... And can get away with using full resources all the time since it's plugged in.

    • reply
      April 21, 2013 8:47 AM

      Shocking!

Hello, Meet Lola