-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 28/06/13 23:37, Matt Giuca wrote: > Did you guys end up chipping in for one?
Not as a group. > Did anybody get theirs? Yes. Mine arrived on Thursday. The cardboard box was damp and looked like someone had used it as a football... but amazingly the contents inside were unarmed. > I got mine this week, and I am severely disappointed from both a > freedom and security standpoint that it requires me to enter a > credit card before I can even turn it on. This controversy was uncovered some months back, so I was expecting to need a credit card. Some information here: https://support.ouya.tv/entries/23463832-Why-do-you-HAVE-to-put-in-credit-debit-card-information-even-for-free-apps-games- - From the link, Ouya support stated "Other than being able to download games via the Discover section, absolutely no other functionality will require that you provide payment information. Period." We know this isn't true - you need to enter this information before you can even log in. Apparently you can load your own .apk files onto the device to run, but you wouldn't even be able to get that far without having some credit verified up front (unless hacking the device, of course). Fortunately, instead of a credit card, you also have the option of using a pre-paid credit code. These were apparently available during pre-order, and can be brought from various places online. eg. http://www.game.co.uk/en/ouya-10-credit-232744 So while some available credit must be verified (which I'm not defending - this aspect of the Ouya console sucks), it seems that you don't have to hand over your credit card to Ouya to store indefinitely if you don't want to. I have a spare debit card which I never have any money in, and I leave at home just for emergencies. eg. If my wallet gets stolen, I can cancel my cards and transfer money to my spare debit card account online while waiting for a replacement. This is the card I used when signing up for an Ouya account. When I made a game purchase (more on this below), I transfered money to the account associated with the card first. That way, I don't have to trust Ouya, and transferring money is still probably easier than dealing with buying pre-paid credit. > https://plus.google.com/108688191891412975833/posts/baejsGtfX3C To address your concern of accidentally being charged for games by button-mashing, the one game I purchased to date gave the impression that the Ouya payment API forces certain GUI changes, based on the way the UI suddenly appeared - it looked very Android-ish, which was a stark contrast to everything else in-game. In any case, you can also configure (under the Parental menu) that you must enter a PIN first to make any purchase. A boss had just appeared after maybe 30 or so minutes of game-play. Then a message appeared asking me to purchase the game if I wanted to continue. Clicking "Purchase"(?) (this is from memory of course), I was told the game would cost $4.99, and then I had to click another button, "Confirm" IIRC, and then click one more time to dispel the message that I had successfully paid. Then i was back in the game. Having witnessed this myself, I can confirm that it was all very smooth and nicely handled. I can understand why they want a credit card up front (and it probably doesn't hurt that Ouya can say to potential developers "we have X number of people with an Ouya console and credit on file ready to make purchases"). Possibly if people had to quit the game, go to Discover, purchase the game, possibly wait for something to download, and then load the game up again and get back to my last checkpoint, some people wouldn't bother. They might go to the store and say "hey, there's 200 other demos here that I haven't tried out" and instead of paying for the game will just go play something else. And that's Ouya's thing - every game must provide a no-cost playable component. If purchases could not happen in game, I expect commercial game developers might have good reason to be scared of people just playing demos and not making purchases. So it is clear to me that this mandatory credit was deliberately enforced as a marketing factor above all else. In the context of a game console, I'm pretty happy with the Ouya. There have been a few surprises (such as the built-in track-pad on the controller which I only discovered by accident), and of course "Make" being right on the main menu where you can run your software builds from. Already I have more games on my Ouya then I have for my Wii-U. - From a free software perspective however, it's been somewhat of a letdown. Apparently, the boot-loader is locked. There was no reference on the device or in the printed documentation (that I noticed, anyway) to the source code, or the GPL etc. although everything does appear to have been dumped on GitHub. They may have released more code than any other major game console to date, but it's not as much as I had hoped for. These HackPad notes seem to have summed up nicely what Ouya meant by "Open"; "anyone can put games on there". https://randomfoo.hackpad.com/Ouya-Hacking-seqz2sKJfDR - -Adam -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRz9vGAAoJEE2M/Tk0piBImIAIAKKIOQFk9yJJEiEX1dL/Anb+ p0QFiCXkiy3X75LQyyqkG/Kb/oDwOx8YcglQqa/+Gssw0lsexcBTmK7j3TYlgOyJ gC025kD5LwSUrP9nZ87ueLIE79hPx+m0dpJmkqYskWmdbn0fcxPsXAy6TIwS9NIY MZRvX7R45+vwHbqICp+B2Yw+E+zsdA/PMP/MS68aCIPcQPeoXpAd6f3Jgm+PewuG wZ5mWyQFSwrTTgUvQl9KuVBmcAL+SkbzGP38fk6B9LGKXlw81HhLm201L9tJ2+7K O2kGCpV28MC9/bU1zZhh0+Y3/KU6leSDc58JbOi8djL89e3uwLhVlnMxkj7+Bak= =ANrg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
