Ouya, a USD 99 TV game console project using Android 4.0 has made a stunning debut on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter — hitting a million dollar mark after just 8 hours. The game console is slated for a March 2013 release and the team behind it promise that it will offer a flexible and open gaming environment that the market wants, which will bring back the good old days of console-TV gaming. As of now, the sleek silver and black cube along with its equally cool controller are just on their prototype stage.

2. Ouya, a USD 99 TV game console project
using Android 4.0 has made a stunning debut
on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter —
hitting a million dollar mark after just 8
hours.
The game console is slated for a March 2013
release and the team behind it promise that
it will offer a flexible and open gaming
environment that the market wants, which
will bring back the good old days of console-
TV gaming. As of now, the sleek silver and
black cube along with its equally cool
controller are just on their prototype stage.

3. Ouya founder Julie Uhrman said, ―It’s ironic,
all the growth in gaming is moving to mobile
platforms, we’re seeing a lot of AAA
developers leaving their console shops to go
to mobile, yet three out of every four dollars
is still spent in the living room, a majority of
gaming time is still spent on the TV, and if
you survey any gamer they’ll tell you their
No. 1 platform is the TV.‖

4. Ouya is now the fastest project in
Kickstarter to reach the million dollar
threshold in just 8 hours of going live. The
team has initially hoped for USD 950,000
pledges in one month for the consoles to be
produced. Support for the project has been
huge that as of the time of this writing,
barely 3 days of being online, the amount of
pledges reached USD 4 million already.
―We never anticipated that it would blow up
like this,‖ said the Ouya founder to Black
Hawk Reviews – Online Games.

5. Hardware specs for the Ouya console include
8Gb of storage, 1Gb of RAM and NVIDIA Tegra
3 processor which could churn out decent 3D
display at 1080 pixels. They don’t sound
impressive and particularly powerful when
compared to PS3 or Xbox but it’s a pretty
good bargain considering the price tag.
And although it runs on Android, it should
not be expected to be have complete touch-
based interface. Ouya will have standard
wireless controller that includes 8 action
buttons, a D-pad, 2 analog sticks and a
touchpad for gesture-based controls.

6. The most appealing thing is that developers
could make games for Ouya minus any
publishing, retail or licensing fees that
usually come with creating a game. That’s
because its OS is fully rootable and every
console will come with a free SDK pre-
loaded on it. In fact, Ouya even welcomes
hackers to tinker with the system —
something that could also backfire to other
consumers who might become targets
of fraud.
The only condition they require is for
developers to have some of the gameplay for
free.

7. ―Our only requirement is that the gamer
have the opportunity to play some aspect of
it for free. We don’t like the idea that you
pay $60 for a game and feel cheated. We
want anybody to have the opportunity to try
the game,‖ Uhrman said.
Still, Uhrman is of the opinion that major
game publishers might also come on board
because their console could give them easy
access to an open digital distribution
environment — all without reducing their
games’ values.
The console will also reportedly support
game-focused video streaming service,
Twitch.tv.