We've seen some pretty cool projects show up on Kickstarter: Capta, Pebble, Chameleon, Vavo... and plenty more. Last night, though, one of the coolest projects I've ever seen made its way to the crowd-funded site: OUYA. You may or may not already be familiar with that name, so a little explanation may be in order.
Update: OUYA broke through the $1m barrier in less than 24 hours. I see big things for the future of this startup - keep the donations coming!
First off, OUYA is an open source, Android-powered video game console. That in itself got my attention, but if you really want to see how awesome OUYA is, watch this:
Proposed Specs:
- Tegra 3 quad-core processor
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB Storage
- HDMI out with 1080p support
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
- One USB 2.0 port
- Wireless Controller
- Android 4.0.x
This project makes perfect sense to me; with the increase in quality games (and more specifically, games designed for the Tegra 3 chipset), something like this is absolutely brilliant. I find myself hooking my tablet up to my TV and playing games like Dead Trigger and Shadowgun a lot, so having a dedicated console to do just that seems like a no-brainer to me.
OUYA is aiming for a "free to play" model; in fact, the only condition that the OUYA team has for developers is "at least some gameplay has to be free." Also, the console will be left unlocked, making it ready-to-root right out of the box (and it won't void the warranty!). Ergo, hackers and modders can go to work on this little box almost immediately. Sounds like the OUYA Team really looked at what hardcore Android enthusiasts want when they sat down to design this console.
All this sounds good, but how much will the console cost, you ask? How does $99 sound? And you can essentially pre-order the device for that price right now by helping fund their 950k goal on Kickstarter. $99 will guarantee you a console as soon as it's released, but if you want to donate more, they have pledges all the way up to 10k. So hit the source link below and let's help make this console a reality.