OUYA: A New Open Source Games Console

Update – OUYA has reached $1.4 million in funding in under 24 hours. There are less than 1400 consoles left as part of the Kickstarter promotion, so if you want one, get it NOW!

Mobile gaming has really built momentum over the past years. Ever since the launch of the App Store in 2008, and the surge in Social Gaming, consoles have looked weaker and weaker, and the statistics (at least on AAA titles) really aren’t pretty to read. The reason many developers (even established AAA Studios like Epic) are introducing mobile franchises, is completely down to; easy of development, speed of iteration and the possibility for massive profit, which the consoles are struggling to match.

That’s where OUYA comes in. OUYA, is a cheap home console, with decent specs;

Tegra3 quad-core processor

1GB RAM

flash

WiFi 802.11 b/g/n

USB 2.0 (one)

Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad

Android 4.0

On top of this, all games are promised to be free of charge – I have no idea how they’re funding them – which is unheard of since the days of hacking together your own code in the 80′s. Taking about hacking, the console itself is easily hackable, hacking is even encouraged by the designers… a truly open source and customisable console.

…and that’s the most interesting part, being built on Android fundamentally provides the same development environment as seen on touch-screen phones, except with a controller.

Not only will games be easily portable to OUYA, meaning that there are already thousands of titles which will work at launch, but there’s also promised first party development. Which has been sorely lacking from the big phone manufacturers.

There is one problem though. Funding. Which is why OUYA is currently a Kickstarter project. If your interested in supporting OUYA you can find them here. The console and one controller are being offered for $95, which is amazing value, considering that the games will be FREE!