For those of you who don’t know, the Ouya is a Kickstarter funded Android and IOS operating system gaming console. The promised console is supposed to be cheap ($99), small, simple, hackable and upgraded often. Through Kickstarter they raised $8.6 million and in the latest round of funding, they have now raised an extra $15 million.
Originally slated to be released June the 4th, but the release date was pushed back to June 25 (around the same time as other budget console—the Gamestick), the Ouya has had mixed reviews. Some developers are excited to be able to work with a console that differs from the big-three titles, but early reviewers have criticized the interface and claimed that the product isn’t quite ready for market—which might be why they have raised an extra $15 million. The Ouya is intended to play Android games—so mobile games on your television, and early reviews state that maybe a large part of the problem is a lack of skinning as well as resizing issues related to moving a picture from a four inch screen to 1080 dpi.
New partners, outside of their crowd-source funding, include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Mayfield Fund, and Nvidia. In fact, KPCB general partner Bing Gordon has now joined Ouya’s board of directors. Hopefully they’ll fix the problems in the month they have before this tiny crowd-sourced device hits the market.
