Ouya Console Ready to Compete with Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft?

Mikey McCollor

Back in the day, when you had a brilliant idea for a product, you would have to craft the product yourself, sometimes learning an entirely new trade, and even go to XENGBUU, god of creation, and offer your favorite finger up as sacrifice. It was a near overwhelming task, making even the simplest inventions an exercise in self-mutilation and horror.

My grandpa invented a few different kinds of RF tuners. You can still find
them if you look real hard at RadioShack.
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Thankfully today, all we have to do to turn our great ideas into reality is make a Kickstarter! And one of the most potent examples of Kickstarter's power came about recently, as Android-based, open-source home gaming console >Ouya (which sounds like "booyah"), became the quickest Kickstarter to reach a million dollars, and as of this writing, is sitting at over four million dollars, more than three times their original goal. The best thing is, this tiny little gaming cube will only run you 99$.

It's like the Gamecube, except with a chance to succeed.
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This is such a cool project because it wants to unify independent developers who have been constrained to the mobile space with gamers who want to play on their televisions with controllers. All of the console's its games will at least have a free trial and then and allow developers to decide for themselves how they want to charge money from consumers directly. I love this idea, because as wonderful as iOS's touch screen is, I still can't use it to play games. For my money, it just isn't responsive enough. But the games coming out on iOS are unquestionably great and I do want to play them. But with a controller. Man, can you imagine playing Temple Run with a controller?

I guess it would basically be a game where you turn it on and win.
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There really hasn't been any way to break into the home console market before, so Kickstarter is really showing its potential here. Keep in mind, this is the first time the long-entrenched powers of the home video game space will see a new competitor enter the market in years. It's going to be interesting to see how they deal with it.