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Today is the day, folks — after a series of short delays, the Android-based gaming console OUYA is finally available for $100. The device has been picking up steam ever since its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign amassed the project creators more than $8 million in funds. That figure was later inflated by a round of funding from investors which added another $15 million to OUYA’s coffers.
This Tegra 3-based gaming console is about as open as you could hope for, with developers being able to access every nook and cranny found packed inside this smallish cube. The device runs Android 4.0 to start, has 8GB of internal storage, supports HDMI, Bluetooth, WiFi and ethernet, and more.
The OUYA SDK allows any developer to create any game they want and get it up and running on OUYA in no time. The console will also feature apps built for your TV, such as YouTube, TwitchTV, iHeartRadio and more.
You can currently find OUYA at retailers Best Buy, Amazon, GameStop and Target, as well as at OUYA’s own website. Give it a good look and see if this console would be right for you and your family. It’s no Xbox One or PlayStation 4, but it’s something if you can’t afford to drop hundreds of dollars on a gaming console.
Be sure to read our early hands-on of the console, our overview of 15 of the console’s many games, and circle back here to let us know if you’ve decided to buy one by dropping a comment and a vote in the poll below.
[polldaddy poll=7203842]
I look forward to playing with one of these…
or one could by a Wii console, i see those are getting cheap.
its buy not by…come on
I’m holding off till the 2nd generation.
Got one, it sucks. I’m one the backers. Nothing but issues. Very disappointing.
I agree. I’m a backer also and very disappointed with the entire experience.
Around beginning of Feb I got an email from them saying that I’ll receive the device in March. I had not received it till end of May so I posted on their Google+ page and got no response but the unit just showed up mid-June. I plugged it in and unit did not turn on. After checking power supply with a voltmeter I found that the it was bad. I replaced the power supply and plugged it in but the unit still does not power on. So looks like the unit and power supply both were bad. The only thing that turns on is the controller… very useful that is!
Over promised and under delivered. For some, not delivered at all.
Well Dave at least you got your OUYA unit…I am a backer and I still haven’t received mines…Now they are available at my local Best Buy…..SIGH…..
what Francis responded I’m alarmed that someone able to make $7386 in 1 month on the internet. have you seen this web link www.KEP2.com
Meh. I’m too spoiled by high budget, high production value games like Skyrim, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and BioShock. Maybe this product needs to be targeted at developing countries where its low price will be more meaningful in the market.
Got one already, I was disappointed that it doesn’t has an audio output separated from the hdmi. Also the UI aren’t smooth at all.
The UI is supposed to be fixed with the latest update. The audio out would not have been great anyway at $100. Would be nice to have digital audio out though.
but it’s better than no sound right now. my pc monitor only got a hdmi but no speakers.
The last couple of updates to the UI have made it much better than it was. As for the audio out, you knew it was HDMI only when you backed it.
yea i should have double checked when i was backing them. now it just collecting dust on my desk haha
Audio out is the #1 thing keeping me from getting this. I use a projector — splitting the HDMI into a separate audio is an unnecessary expense and yet another piece of equipment.
Still deciding if it’s worth it. I’ll give it awhile and read some more non-dev reviews.
E-mail them and tell them you want USB audio support. USB audio adapters are just a few bucks and the SGS4 supports it, so the OUYA definitely should. The more voices we get asking for it, the more likely they are to add it.
how does contra work on this? up up down down left right left right U O Circle-U (omg where is Select?!?!)
Kickstarter-backer, still waiting for my OUYA to arrive.
Nope. Needs Google play.
I agree. I already want a MOJO instead. Paid for mine just after the kickstart ended and still haven’t received jack crap. Got an email saying it was being shipped, then another email saying it could be between 2 and 3 weeks till i get it. Whatevs. Hopefully the boys at XDA will have it nice and hopped up so we can just flash a regular Android OS on it like the MOJO version.
With the Wii now priced at $100.00, this thing is difficult to justify.
PSP is $99.99 as well, and that can be played on the TV or on the go.
i’m a backer as well, still didnt get mine, so asked for a refund.
so much for a ‘guarantee’ to get one before it hits the stores…
Same here….
Not one bit interested
Was going to but now that I just lost my job might wait a while
Had mine a month and I’m loving it. There are some fun games, XBMC is running on it. I’m pretty sure I’ll buy a second one for the other room sometime in the future.
I think we tend to forget that, as readers and posters of tech blogs, news websites, and forums….we are NOT the average consumer. This console is actually not marketed at us at all. This is marketed at Joe and Jane Average…especially Jane, who will see the $99 price tag and Android and make it an impulse buy for the kiddies. Please note that it was just released today and Amazon has already sold out. This console may not be huge on the level of XBox or PS4 sales, but Ouya has the right idea. That price puts it in toyland, so the expectations for it from consumers will be different. It’ll sell….just watch.
Every average Jane and Joe I know don’t even know what the Ouya is.. and when I told them about it, they still weren’t interested. It seems parents I know would rather give the kids a tablet than something like this – even if the price difference is huge.
We shall see. This is a new device in a new market segment. When the NES first came out Joe Blow average consumer didn’t know about it either. You have to give it time to be marketed! I don’t think they will have any problem selling a significant number of systems. Heck, 2 years ago folks were saying the same things about the Kindle Fire.
waiting till second gen.
Yeah, bought mine a year ago, or so I thought. Still waiting for mine….as are many original ouya backers!
Laggy, glitchy, outdated junk…
I love polls
If this thing came out last year, it would have been awesome. After my friend ordering it and us spending some time playing with it.. Well, I know it’s early for the device, but it’s just so underwhelming. Maybe we’re spoiled having every other game console known to man, having high end PCs, tablets, phones, etc… The Ouya just doesn’t hit any kind of wow factor or have a single thing going for it that makes it seem worthwhile. Honestly, the Shield looks way more amazing than this, but I do get it is set for a different audience.
Nope, planning on buying a Wii U in the holidays. Never had any interest playing sub-par games on my TV.
Well why would you buy a Wii U then? :P
I don’t consider Mario, smash bros and Zelda, Mario kart subpar ;)
Just not interested in this. I’d rather play ps1 & 2 games…. They are cheap too and the games are better.
I’m better off with a HTPC for emulators and such. I was interested in this purely for that purpose, but there’s much more functionality with a HTPC. Besides, if you want to play Android games on the TV, simply get a bluetooth gamepad and an HDMI cable…
people with attitudes like jak_341 is why developers greet discouraged from creating 2nd generation Consoles because of lack of support. common, how many smartphones, tablets or at that android based consoles are you gonna find for $99 ? with the quality of work that has been put into the ouya ui at that?…I for one saw the potential of android since mytouch 3g and I still do now. without the support of the android community we slow the android technological progression and give apple the foothold to gain the lead with their lack of innovation and I zombie nation to blindly help ios outsell android. Stop being a statistic and support the ouya folks…. this message was approved by one of many few soldiers on the android front fighting the evil apple regime
get discouraged I meant to say not greet
good innovative products get my money, bad ones don’t, the ouya is simply not a good product(yet?) I’m not going to “blindly” support a crappy product just because it is not made by apple.
if they develop something that I can’t already do with my smartphone, I might buy it.
actually everyone with your opinion assumes you can do these things with your smartphone or tablet but the fact of the matter is most of the games meant for these products are not optimized and designed to be used with a controller, so let me break it down for you no controller support (with the exception of a few games, gta, max Payne, dead trigger etc ) no resizing to full screen and HD for older games, no overclocking (at least not recommended due to overheating, hardware failure because of lack of performance maintenance) the fact that it has a built in fan to dissipate heat from the GPU and CPU which phones and tablets do not) makes for more stability graphically for higher end android games, keeps the user interface smooth because it is less likely to overheat and become less overwhelmed their in increasing the longevity of the little awesome game box and that it has the potential to be of the best Google TV media box, especially with all the updates it gets that are only making the experience even better, blindly following a crappy product is just a incredibly invalid statement sir. Because there are other products which have no relevence (not saying all) have better specs than the OUYA does not make the OUYA a crappy product. maybe the lack of education in this regard is what discourages you, the fact that because there’s a tegra 4 now maybe ? but to tell me that a tegra 3 processor or a work in progress firmware(just generalizing my point not putting words in your mouth) makes a product crappy and then turn around and say other products which use the same or equivalent hardware or software justify your statement makes your point very contradicting and FYI I could care less what those money grubbing whore mongers at apple produce I respect what they paved for all the future of mobile technology but that’s as far as I stand with them, like you why am I gonna buy some underwhelming product from them when I can buy something way better for half the cost and at that overpay for underwhelming specs ? I sense another contradiction coming
Don’t know how you got all of that out of my 3 sentence reply :). let me put it differently for you, the OUYA has yet to show it can do anything my smartphone can not do. Right now, everyone is just theorizing it is going to be better. I called OUYA crappy because it has yet to prove anything else and has only shown itself to be crappy. I never compared it’s hardware or relevance to anything else. Other companies have made better products using similar/older hardware.
Simply,OUYA lacks any polish or “must have” features. If they want to be a successful company, they will need to appeal to the masses, not just android nerds. Like others have stated, for the same price, you could buy a Wii which has more features or will soon be able to find used PS3s for close to the same price. So in comparison, the OUYA will be a “crappy” product.
The problem is that their 1st generation was everyone else’s previous generation
I’m a backer and I’m pretty satisfied so far. I feel like I got
exactly what I paid for. I got an Android-powered box that is a decent
media box (which, as long as it gets an official XBMC and Netflix
release, it will only get better), a box for emulation (I own an old
Playstation, N64, and many games and the Ouya plays those games quite
well), and it plays a few games on top of that using a decent controller. What did people expect for $99?
I wasn’t expecting triple-A games… I was hoping for a few really
solid games i could play on it for a few hours each night and a few
games that a fun to play with friends. Already, the Ouya fits the bill
for friend-gaming with games like You Don’t Know Jack, Bomb Squad, and
several others. And the people who are complaining about not having
Google Play support…. that really baffles me. The vast majority of
games on Google Play are built only for touch screens…. without them
being reworked for a controller, they don’t even make sense on a system
like this. Nothing with the system is fundamentally broken. It’s still
an open platform that, for the most part, I feel in control of, and with
each firmware update, the system gets better. Usually, for $99, you’d
be lucky to purchase a good set-top box media player. This is far more
functional, flexible, and open than that.
Exactly my point. For the price of a Google TV, someone can buy this, which will do essentially all that device does, and play games with a decent controller too. For $100, I can easily see folks buying one just to try it out.
What they really needed to do is push out XBMC, Plex, Netflix, Crunchyroll, and possibly Plex. All the sideloads work fine and make it an excellent set-top box. As for games, quite a few decent touchscreen mappers are out there. They really need some decent Madfinger games or the like.
actually it does support xbmc and Netflix pretty well. But yeah hopefully the future updates will give it into a more console/Google tv feel to make it a more complete overall entertainment experience
thank you finally a non spoiled Xbox one zombie who dictates what he wants to play and do with his console he owns instead of the other way around
all this talk about the Wii being a better console when it only has 512mb of ram and an outdated processor vs 1gb of ram with a tegra 3 clocked and CPU fan cooled processor and you guys are calling it crappy ? hell the Wii you has a tri-core processor so that tells about how much Nintendo gives a crap about performance. I’m sure they’ll be emulators that can play both Wii’s and software that will sync both the Wii and Wii u controller to the OUYA so what do we need those other more expensive consoles for ? a Wii with only 2gb of external memory support ? or a sequal to this with monstrous line up of games ? I’m sorry but I’m still not discouraged in sticking with my OUYA
wii is able to support sdhc cards that are bigger then 2gb, just early games don’t
still doesn’t support HD, and has a monstrosity of a controller if you plan to play more than just Wii and GameCube games on it
i think the point of a wii is to play wii games on it? and the classic controller is useful for the other consoles in the online store
OUYA controller is way better than the classic, I don’t need to plug the OUYA controller to another controller, also has better response and sensitivity. I think your point is to find a way to justify a reason not to buy a OUYA and at all not have anything to do with the subject at hand which is who will buy an ouya . by your logic the Wii is the equivalent of the OUYA if u compare it to the ps3 and Xbox 360 so why not just get a kinect or a PlayStation move instead ? I own a modded wii and I have to say if not for that I could hate the hell out of it regardless of the few games I enjoy on it but they have nothing to do with me liking the Wii its the games that set it apart the innovation is nice but still not perfect just like the OUYA the games and are what other media capabilities are what gonna set it apart from. the next gen might focus on it’s other attributes with improved hardware, features and different ui experience but we might not know that and see another Dreamcast pass us by if we don’t support it. Plus the pricing which I forgot to mention and the awesome indie developers that will bring back what it was like to put your heart and soul into a game will he attracted to this cheaper liscensing and open source console instead of not being able to focus on what’s important about a game because of having to rely on publishers and stock holders that will hinder them due to deadlines
i wasn’t comparing the ouya to the wii (which console’s controller where you calling a “monstrosity”?) or making any kind of point in weather to buy or not to buy a ouya
waiting for madcatz MoJo
it’s $99.00 people how can expect other developers to have faith in other consoles or TV entertainment devices if we don’t support the the pioneers. Its because of that reason that things like Google TV devices have progressed at such a slow pace. This is a company trying something fairly new, think of the future versions of this or even a other companies coming out with android consoles rivaling PlayStation and Xbox or even android os based gaming desktops with complete cable or satellite TV service integration a Google TV desktop computer would be so baddass, but it’s not likely to happen if we don’t start somewhere, $99 is not asking alot for great things to come whether it be the OUYA, or even one day Sony integrating a nicer tricked out version of the xperia android ui as the official PlayStation dashboard, the possibility is endless with an a little open source software that has gone a long way to bring us so much JOOOOYYYY! O.o
Got one, I love it. End of Story
I treat my electronics like I treat my food…
If I can’t pronounce it I don’t buy it.
(I’m assuming it’s pronounced OH-YAH)
yeah sounds like the focus group that was given the responsibility of thinking up names for was from Wisconsin lol