Google Indefinitely Delays the Nexus Q After Poor Reviews
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Then they should've made the Q the cable box for Google Fiber. That would've really made the headlines.
However, while it's easy for us to sit here and take potshots at Google, we have to remember that it's a logistical nightmare bringing together disparate divisions of a massive organization like Google and getting them to coordinate their efforts so that the company as a whole can present a united front to consumers.
The price is essential though. Screw everything else. Just make sure it's $99. And using a beefed up Tegra 4 (no regard for energy efficiency in a console), or some other next-gen GPU architecture with OpenGL ES 3.0 support (like Exynos 6/Mali T658), coupled with Cortex A15 CPU's, would be a huge bonus over OUYA, even if it arrives a few months later compared to OUYA.
But please - please - stop buying into that theory that says early adopter products need to be more expensive or whatever makes Google release such products at prices that everyone thinks are insane.
Just a few examples:
Xoom - $800
Google TV - $300
Chromebook $450
Nexus Q - $300
Google still hasn't learned that they need to introduce these new products at a "sweet spot" pricing point - much like the Nexus 7 actually! But it took Amazon to teach them that, so I don't have much faith in them repeating this, especially after seeing the Nexus Q pricing.
Google's problem regarding pricing is also that they keep putting components that are too expensive in those products, without receiving an equivalent value from it.
The Xoom was this expensive because of the 3g/4G chips and high MP cameras. The Chromebooks and Google TV were this expensive because of Intel's Atom chips. Nexus Q was too expensive because it had an amplifier (did anyone actually care about that?), and because it was "built in US". They need to stop making these kind of mistakes once and for all, if they want to be successful selling hardware.
Apple puts only the essential components in their products that 80% of the people would use, and make sure they are high quality. For example, the original iPad had a high-quality display, but had no cameras, and not even a GPS. This kind of thinking made the iPad cost "only" $500 at the time, when people thought it would be significantly more - maybe not $1000, but perhaps more expensive than an unlocked iPhone, thanks to the expected bigger screen, bigger battery, etc. Google needs to learn to do that as well.
Buy, what, kickstarter mindshare?
There's very little reason for anyone to have confidence in Ouya as a platform. From the developers' apparent inability to plan (still no dev documentation, still no SDK...and they're planning to release in the next eight months!) to their pimping of a port of the Android port of a DS game as the biggest thing that's happened to the platform. (I have the Android port of FF3 on my Nexus 7. It's ugly enough there. It's going to be really ugly at 40".)
I had really high hopes for this at first but this has been in meltdown mode pretty much from day one. I just hope that the hardware actually gets into users' hands, because frankly at this point I'm not even sure.
The gaming and media part is exciting for me, but I really want a replacement for the Wii I am currently using.
At the price they are aiming for (for future retail) and with the wide enough feature set, I'd be happy to buy two.
On the other hand, there is something wrong with releasing a product that turns out to be over-priced and under-featured. That worked for Google in the past where it was all Web products, the price was "free", you could just slap a "beta" label on it and iterate daily. But that doesn't work when something costs $300 dollars in a competitive marketplace with established leaders.
No, what google did was to listern to feedback and respond in the best possible way. Those who ordered get the product and there money back and those who havnt get a chance to wait for the improved version based upon feedback. Realy can't fault that and to call it amateurish is perhaps overly strong. No power plays at work at all, mearly good PR/marketing and activly listerning to feedback.
I'm all for listening to feedback. But there are ways of getting feedback on a product without doing a major product launch. Like, say, making 50 prototypes and trying them out on Google employees and external user testers. There's no way these problems wouldn't have surfaced in user tests. I suspect all the major issues would have shown up with just 5-10 testers.
The question is: why didn't they do that? Plenty of people know how. Since I can't believe that all their executives, designers, and engineers are that clueless/arrogant, I think it's reasonable to suspect that the problem is one clueless executive exerting power.
Sounds like Google TV...
There have to be questions about how no-one worked out at least some of the larger issues before it got anywhere near launch.
Over doing it leads to Duke Nuken Forever like situation.
And in the end, they put out a product that they knew wasn't good enough. Literally knew it.
Edit: They also managed a pointless keyboard with the boxes.
Then ontop of that they are not only honouring all preorders with the product they were advertised, but also doing it for free with full refunds as well.
That is how you do marketing and deal with feedback.
I can appreciate the pressure: Every year, all eyes are on the company to match/outshine Apple's WWDC announcements.
It seems that Google needs to move IO to a different (less pressurised) time of year, and focus on only announcing release-ready products.
This and the opertunity to add google tv to the device from the start would of been to good a opertunity to miss that I feel that could be the main reason there stepping abck a bit and doing a rethink now instead of carrying on a unstable path.
My Android TV running ICS was only 135 $NZ and I got a wireless keyboard for 70 $NZ. Now my kids play Angry Birds Space and Justin Bieber videos on TV!
I don't want an Android console, I don't need something else to stream content to my TV, but what I do want is a couple of glowing orbs in my house that will remind me over speakers that I have an appointment at 10am but heavy traffic means I should leave at 9:15am. Or, using built-in mics or connected Android devices, ask it Now-style questions and receive Star Trek style responses.
One is linked to in the article itself. Others are hardly difficult to find.
> The only people who got it are people at IO anyway, so that's kind of a small sample.
I'd say folks at IO are likely to be fairly positive towards Google.
> I'd say they delayed it so they could add more features before a real launch, just so it lives up to Google's standards.
It wasn't up to Google's standards, but you're doubtful that it got poor reviews?
To be honest, Google doesn't have a great track record when it comes to initial product releases. They get by with it because they release early, iterate often, and eventually develop a winner (a good strategy). But rarely are they winners out of the gate.
If your comment were about Apple, then absolutely you'd have a point about high standards.