Kickerstarter and Ouya: How This Could Change Gaming

If you haven't heard yet, Ouya is the fastest ever Kickstarter project to have reached $1 million.  Currently it's at $1.2 million, and it continues to rise steadily.  So what is Ouya?  Ouya is a company that will create a new console that will sell for under $100.  It will run on Android, and have touch sensitive controllers.  Now, many people may say something along the lines of "big deal, I can connect a controller to my Asus Transformer Prime/Acer Iconia," and it'll be just like an Ouya console.  So if you already own an Android tablet, why should you give this any attention?

First off, there is a reason why Ouya raised over a million dollars in a day.  Ouya is specifically meant to be hackable.  You can root your console without voiding the warranty, for starters.  This means developers will have the freedom to manipulate the console (and thus the games they create) as they see fit.  Second, Ouya is trying to tap into a market currently unoccupied: the casual gamer on a big screen.  There are plenty of people who have bought their tablet to play games casually on it.  How many amazing Indie games have you played?  Probably a lot (most of the editor's choice on the games section of Googleplay are Indie games).  Now, how many Indie games have you played on a console like Xbox or PS3?  Probably not many.  For those who simply want to play video games very casually on an HDTV with your friends and family, you don't need to buy an expensive console anymore just to buy the cheap, casual games for them.  And finally, just because it will be a sub-100 dollar console, it does NOT mean the console will be lacking in processing/graphics power.  It will be powered by the Tegra 3 processor, which has proven itself quite well in coming closer and closer to current generation console graphics.  If you don't believe me, check out the current Tegra 3 optimized games Shadowgun and Deadtrigger on YouTube.  And I'm positive that there will be some overclocking done on the Tegra 3 chips to squeeze even more performance out of them.

All in all, it seems that Ouya has a great future ahead of them.  I will be keeping my eye on any development from this console.