Ouya: New Console Not So Awesome After all

“Before I can use the Ouya, I’m required to provide a funding source.”

I think this is totally underhanded and very Apple-esque. Yes the OUYA may have been billed as the most wonderfully awesome device on the planet, but that’s no excuse for questionable tactics. 

The OUYA store, DISCOVER hides all the prices! When you visit DISCOVER you are forced to gamble, games and items in the store, may or may not, cost money. OUYA gives you zero information. Not in the fancy drop down, nor in the more info button. 

Then comes the kicker!

Many of the games in DISCOVER are trials of some sort, and you don’t even get to know that! It could be a demo, or a time limited demo or a demo that will only allow you to play it if it detects that you’re standing on your head for all you know! Or *gasp* it may actually be, completely free.

DISCOVER doesn’t tell me when an app will demand money from me. I am flying blind until after I’ve already downloaded it. 

There is no way we’d expect a brick and motar store to act like this. Inviting us in with lots of pretty pictures and products with no price tags. Only to be told at the till that we just spent several hundred dollars.

This is disgraceful. There is no trust here. Yet magically, I’m expected to willingly give my credit card information to a company that won’t even tell me the price of their products. 

The OUYA seems great, an open source game console, running Android of all things. Yet unless I’m willing to part with my credit card information (or a prepaid card) I am now the owner of a shiny $99 brick.