For anyone unfamiliar, “The Ouya Project” was a Kickstarter campaign started by a talented group of individuals bent on cracking open the world of traditional console development. Their belief is that the new age of console technology has made it nearly impossible for Indie Developers to create their own titles without having a massive overhead.
And in all fairness, they’re pretty spot on. The manpower that is actually required to port a game for use on a console market is pretty staggering and its nearly impossible for someone with a low-income to just “create a game” and deliver it successfully to an “at-home consumer. “Their new Ouya console would run exclusively with the Android OS, giving an open-source world to developers that wish to port games without purchasing an expensive development kit.
So with idea in hand, the group took to Kickstarter.com in an attempt to secure funding for what seemed like a monumental amount. The project originally needed around 1 Million USD in funding to ensure that everything could be created and that a product could be brought to the market. However, as the company found out yesterday, a lot more people are emotionally and financially invested in their success than they originally assumed.
The campaign officially ended on August 9 and managed to bring in an astonishing 8.5 Million Dollar payload. Sources say that the extra funding will go to cranking out the project faster and will also ensure that all of the bugs are worked out prior to launch. This just goes to show you how powerful a tool Kicktarter can be when you have such an innovative idea. I sincerely hope that The Ouya Project can really get off to a good start and that it helps to bring some competition to the world of gaming, as well as open up jobs for independent developers.
If you’re curious to exactly what the Ouya console entails and the mission behind it, then take a look at the following video:
Photo Credit: Ouya/Kickstarter.com
