The kick started, Android console, OUYA inches ever closer to release as developer units are being shipped by the end of the month.
The team behind the Android-powered console has announced that they will be shipping the OUYA to anyone who pledged over $699 dollars to the $8.5 million kickstart goal that was reached back in August. The console will be sent out for developers to start testing on December 28.
The idea behind the console is that it will be a $99 console, built on Android, where all the games are free to play.
OUYA was created in 2012 by Julie Uhrman, a video game industry veteran who saw an opportunity to open up the last closed game platform — the TV. Julie and an initial team of game developers and advisors brought the concept to life, with the help of Yves Behar and fuseproject, and took OUYA to Kickstarter in July of 2012. OUYA’s first consoles will ship in early 2013.
“Yes, we are shipping these to you on time, as promised,” the company said in a recent update. “The dev consoles are an early version of the OUYA console and controller designed for developers to test their games on OUYA. Our Kickstarter developers are the first to get a crack at ’em! We’re psyched to have you on board, and we can’t wait to see what pours from your brain!”
For backers of any tier of the Kickstarter, OUYA chief executive officer Julie Uhrman also announced that usernames can be claimed on December 25.
“By December 25, we’ll email each of you a link to activate your account. For those of you who responded to our survey about preferred usernames, you’ll be able to confirm your choice. For the handful of popular names that had conflicts, we broke the tie(s) by honoring whomever backed OUYA first on Kickstarter. And, if any of you didn’t respond-or didn’t get your preferred username, you can choose a name when December 25 rolls around,” said Uhrman in the announcement.
You can read a basic fact sheet about what the OUYA is and what is designed for in the document below. It looks to be good for developers and gamers a like.
The Train2Game Blog 