Ouya CEO acknowledges 'a lot of mistakes'

Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman admitted the company has made "a lot of mistakes" at a recent conference, and reiterated that they're continuing to listen to feedback and make improvements.

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Ouya has seen its fair share of complaints and controversies, and CEO Julie Uhrman has made a habit of confronting them head on. At a recent conference, she acknowledged some of the company's missteps, but reiterated her view that the startup can make inroads by listening to feedback.

"We have done a lot of things wrong," Uhrman said in comments from the XOXO technology festival (via Polygon). "We've made a lot of mistakes. And I think one thing that's really unique about us is that we're gonna continue to make them. We're young, we're scrappy, we're moving fast. We're building this product in the open with you. We got our start with you. We get better every day because we listen to you. Some things are going to resonate and some things aren't going to resonate."

Among the complaints were Kickstarter units shipping late, the controller, some strange advertising missteps, and the recent brouhaha over the Free the Games Fund promotion. She said of that one in particular that the company didn't foresee "all the different ways people could take advantage of that program."

For her part, Uhrman has been fairly open about the company's problems. She personally acknowledged many of them before, including the indie promotion and delayed shipments. She's remained optimistic, though, having predicted that some developers would make more than $1 million by the end of this year.

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  • reply
    October 23, 2013 9:30 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Ouya CEO acknowledges 'a lot of mistakes'.

    Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman admitted the company has made "a lot of mistakes" at a recent conference, and reiterated that they're continuing to listen to feedback and make improvements.

    • reply
      October 23, 2013 9:56 AM

      of course she remains optimistic, or at least acting like she is. thats what a ceo does.

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        October 23, 2013 10:56 AM

        You know what though, it is somewhat refreshing to see them accepting the responsibility. I'm not going to rush out to buy an Ouya (particularly not with the 50 variants that seem to be on the horizon), but I would definitely consider them thanks to the attitude adjustment.

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          October 23, 2013 12:21 PM

          Accepting responsibility would be resigning. This is merely an attempt to appease their customers.

          The alternative would be to say, "No, there have been no problems! We've got everything right!" Saying that would only invite ridicule and scorn, so admitting that they've made mistakes is the only avenue open to them.

          I wouldn't say it's in any way refreshing or worthy of praise.

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            October 23, 2013 2:45 PM

            Resigning would only be admitting defeat. Taking responsibility, to me at least, is putting a face to the issue; something EA usually won't do. Admitting there are issues and saying the baggage is on her is taking responsibility. But, it also means she's got a growing amount of rope to hang herself with (retire) in a heartbeat.

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            October 23, 2013 4:47 PM

            Since when does accepting responsibility mean resigning? That's more like avoiding any responsibility and leaving the mess to fix to someone else. Accepting responsibility means actually acknowledging AND addressing the problems. Of course, it's a wait and see if the CEO does address the issues at hand.

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      October 23, 2013 11:22 AM

      Ouya needs to (already) update the SoC. Tegra 5 is coming out in Q1 of next year, skip Tegra 4 and make the leap to 5 while maintaining backwards compatibility.

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        October 23, 2013 12:03 PM

        [deleted]

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          October 23, 2013 12:31 PM

          Tegra 4i is taking so long because of LTE certification. Nvidia has already stated Tegra 5 is coming out in early 2014. They already taped out the chip and had working silicon several months ago.

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            October 23, 2013 2:48 PM

            This is what I was thinking. Pretty fast announcement that the T5 was already coming only just as Shield was finally (fully?) launched and that only just now we're seeing other non Nvidia made products coming to market. I said back at the kickstarter phase that they should have taken all that hype to work directly with Nvidia to get in on the T4 and skip the T3. The problem with them skipping to the T5 from the 3 at this point is that it'll be years before developers reach that level of detail. As it is I don't see a ton that takes direct advantage of the T3; especially its special features.

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        October 23, 2013 7:49 PM

        If Tegra 5 can run Retroarch at full speed with all the shaders I want, then I'd probably buy an Ouya with that. But I buy a lot of stupid things. I've spent stupid money on hypothetical internet spaceships...so slightly less stupid money on actual hardware (albeit actually stupid actual hardware) seems like something I'd do. I mean I own a fucking GP2X...hell I own two of them, an original version and a GP2X Wiz.

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      October 23, 2013 2:56 PM

      [deleted]

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      October 23, 2013 3:00 PM

      This thing is already dead, right? We can forget about it now.

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        October 23, 2013 4:43 PM

        Well, I enjoy the piss out of mine. It's very fun at the "play games with friends" level, regardless of the mistakes they've made.

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      October 23, 2013 4:43 PM

      Did he go on to say, "OHHHHHHHHH YEAHHHH!!!"?

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      October 23, 2013 7:19 PM

      Really the main issue is the damn controller, the lag is completely unacceptable. Other than that I dont see too many things to apologize for. Even the Tegra 5 probably wouldnt be able to emulate a Dreamcast, PS2, Wii (Dolphin) etc. As long as it can run the latest Android games, support developers, properly market themselves and games, they could succeed. I love mine and so do my kids.

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      October 23, 2013 7:43 PM

      I'd buy one of these, except for all the bad things I've heard about the controller.

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      October 23, 2013 7:59 PM

      Im not sure I would buy a gaming console like this from someone who appears to have virtually zero experience in this industry. I can probably safely assume that many of their mistakes are probably attributed by here sheer lack of industry experience, at least that I am aware of.

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        October 23, 2013 8:40 PM

        If only anyone could have possibly foreseen that a company with no experience, an operating budget less than half of what Microsoft spends on Halo 3's commercials, and an underpowered machine which allows you to hack it and has to produce a profit at the same price as the cheap iPhone could possibly fail.

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