Ouya CEO: "We've made a lot of mistakes"
Julie Uhrman recalls struggles during first year.
During Ouya's first year on the market, the company made many mistakes and more are likely to happen, CEO Julie Uhrman said during the XOXO Festival recently.
"We're a new company. We are a dirty company. We make a ton of mistakes. Let me count the ways," she said in a presentation now available on YouTube (via Polygon).
One "highlight," Uhrman said, was failing to deliver Ouya units to backers on time. The first consoles made it to supporters on schedule, but some backers had to wait more than a month for their delivery. Uhrman said previously that she was "pissed" about this.
When Ouya units did make it to users, some controllers had thumbsticks that didn't work and some action buttons got stuck, she said. On top of this, the WiFi feature for some Ouya units was shoddy, Uhrman said, and some controllers were laggy.
Another mistake Uhrman admitted to involved a tweet the company sent out about The Dragon, Cancer, a 2014 Ouya-exclusive game that details a family's personal struggle with childhood cancer. Ouya's tweet about the game coming exclusively to Ouya ended with "Get some."
Uhrman also addressed the controversial Free The Games Fund, which offered fund matching if developers agreed to at least time-exclusivity on the Ouya platform. "We so did not think about all the different ways that people could take advantage of that kind of program," she said.
There was also the vomit-fuelled Ouya advertisement that poked fun at $60 games, which drew controversy over its over-the-top usage of puke.
"We have done a lot of things wrong. We've made a lot of mistakes, and I think one thing that's really unique about us is that we're going to continue to make them," Uhrman said. "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."
The Ouya microconsole officially launched in June. It has not been announced how many units have been sold to date.
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