Ouya Shipping to Kickstarter Backers This Month
Prepare to be invaded by the very first Android console.
That crazy little Android console called OUYA is reportedly heading out to Kickstarter backers on March 28. According to the team, parts are in the factory and assembly lines are "buzzing". Production will gradually ramp up once all the assembly bugs are ironed out. In the meantime, the $99 device is still slated for a full June release at retail outlets like Best Buy, GameStop and Target.
"Tens of thousands of you will receive your OUYA, and you’ll get to start playing right away," the team said. "You will also get to watch OUYA evolve over the coming weeks and months. We’ll continue to add new features, refine our user experience, and bring on more games."
Kim Swift and a small team of developers are also working on an exclusive title for the Android console. Swift was formerly employed by Value and worked on hit games like Portal and Left 4 Dead.
"We truly feel that this platform will give us the freedom to fully realize the funky, unique game we have in mind," she said. "Though the title will definitely appeal to core gamers in terms of skill and difficulty, it really has a completely unexpected, imaginative slant that’s totally at home on this console."
OUYA should do a fine job of shaking up the console gaming industry this summer, offering console-quality titles sold through a built-in (non-Google Play) store. Under the hood, the square gadget sports a quad-core Tegra 3 SoC clocked at 1.7 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage, a USB port and a microUSB port. It will also come with a special wireless controller, and the Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" OS.
The OUYA console arrives as Microsoft and Sony begin to duke it out for the consumer dollar this holiday season with the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox Infinity. Sony recently semi-revealed its console, showcasing a few games, the controller and a list of specs. Microsoft is slated to do a semi-reveal of its own in April, while both are expected to reveal their full arsenal in June during E3 2013.
Will OUYA make an impact on their sales? That will depend on Sony and Microsoft's final products. Gamers have grown accustomed to spending short amounts of time and small amounts of money via smartphones and tablets. The rate of hardware maturity is also quicker in the mobile sector, meaning that eventually smartphones and tablets -- including OUYA -- will surpass even the new 2013 consoles.
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That said, both Microsoft and Sony will need to have conceived of a way to keep gamers glued to consoles rather than relying on a rapidly advancing mobile industry. With OUYA, gamers may not have Mario and Gears of War and Killzone, but they'll likely have quality games developed by the likes of Electronic Arts, SEGA, Square Enix, Capcom and more (ongoing list) in time. Plus, the console itself is $99, making it an easy upgrade each time the hardware is refreshed.
Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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I still think it's a shitty product. They could have put something like a dvd player with it, maybe even a better chip with discrete graphics.Reply
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nbelote This is not meant to be cutting-edge or have awesome looking graphics. It's to bring games, specifically in an open-source environment, in on the cheap. Being open source it means anyone can develop for it, which means you can get small studios who couldn't afford PS3/Xbox development rights/hardware suddenly developing on this system. More games (albeit most of them will be crappy) means the potential for better ones.Reply -
Non-Euclidean athulajpI still think it's a shitty product. They could have put something like a dvd player with it, maybe even a better chip with discrete graphics.Reply
Why, to drive up the price and sate a non-existant market? Brilliant.
You obviously have no idea what they are trying to do here.
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antilycus It's also 99 bucks. Cheaper than a tablet ( Asus TF700T being comparable ), supports OpenGL 4 9( or maybe 3.2 ), users are stuck paying 60 bucks a game, all games must have a "demo" version and it's not just the big studios pumping out the same crap over and over. The industry is changing, get with the times or continue to play your atari 2600. If you are an Indie developer this is a dream come true with high demand. The only people that wont buy this are the people that support big business only and think the little people should fail. To them I say. enjoy your next halo, call of duty, gears of war, devil may cry and the rest of the boring rehashes that the studios survive on.Reply -
Fokissed antilycusThe only people that wont buy this are the people that support big business only and think the little people should fail.Yeah, it couldn't possibly be people that aren't the target market that don't buy this. Some people don't want to buy a console just to play phone games. Quality matters to some people.Reply -
Non-Euclidean FokissedYeah, it couldn't possibly be people that aren't the target market that don't buy this. Some people don't want to buy a console just to play phone games. Quality matters to some people.Reply
There is no reason they have to remain "phone games". With a real display, and extra storage available off of USB, a lot is possible. It just requires imagination, something you apparently dont have. Will it be state of the art? No, but you dont get that for $99.
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Non-Euclidean What it can be, is an affordable console alternative for kids games, etc. No reason to dump huge amounts of $ into MS/Sony pockets for your kids, and pay $50 up for Ratchet and Clank.Reply -
bustapr finally get to see if this lives up to its hype soon. Ive no real problem with tegra 3 since nearly every "high end" android game of today is optimized to run well on this SoC(not to mention this is an improved version of tegra 3). I personally think this is the best thing to have for emulators(playing on a tv with a controller is the best way to play snes games). hopefully this will have a strong indie following.Reply
for the people saying this is for "phone" games, well this isnt really for phone games. its for android games, which is similar but different. the games on this are not running with a touchscreen UI, they use a controller.
theres also the other tiny market this may target, which is the hackers. Im sure this console can be raspberry pi-ified somehow. theres possibilities with this platform. I hope it succeeds and that it spawns some innovations.