OUYA video game console available for preorder on Amazon

The video game console OUYA made a splash on Kickstarter last year when it managed to exceed its funding goal of $950,000 by almost 1000%. A funding of nearly a million is a lot even for Kickstarter terms and beating that goal by tenfold is certainly an indicator of the device's appeal to a larger audience.

Update: OUYA is no longer available and the project website won't be available anymore after June 25, 2019. End

So what's OUYA? It is a multimedia console for Android that you can plug right into your TV to play games, run apps or browse the Internet. While the focus of the system is gaming, it has been designed for other tasks as well like listening to Internet radio, watching videos and movies or running live streams on the TV.

If you missed to participate in the funding of the console on Kickstarter, you can now pre-order the OUYA console on Amazon. What's interesting is that the price is nearly identical to the price on Kickstarter. For $99, you get the console and one controller.

Specs

• 1 OUYA wireless contorller and case
• Powered by NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core
• Memory 1 Gigabyte of RAM
• Internal Storage 8 Gigabyte of Flash memory
• One USB 2.0 port, one USB Micro port
• WiFi, Ethernet port and Bluetooth support
• HDMI output up to 1080p HD

What you also need to know is that every game on the console will be free to try and downloadable from the Internet. What's interesting is that the console can tap into Android's vast apps and game offerings. What's missing right now is an overview of the games one can expect to play when it comes out. How many will be exclusive to the console, and how many will be taken from the Android store?

The console will certainly have its appeal to an audience, for instance those who like to play games on their smartphones and tablets, and would like to experience the very same games on a big screen.

Here are a couple of videos from users who got their hands on a developer console. They show games that play on the system which can give you a good impression of what you can expect.

The overall consensus seems to be that the system is ok for its price, but that you should not expect a full blown Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 for the price. What you will get are games that run on smartphones and emulated games mostly, so do not expect the next Call of Duty to make an appearance on the system.

Some reviewers noted that the 8 Gigabyte storage won't be enough in the long run, that it is great for running emulators and smart TV.

I'd be interested in running the box as a media player. XBMC is one of the best frontends out there and if I can connect a large enough USB drive to it or stream directly from a computer, it could very well become my next media player for the TV since all gaming consoles do not get that right at all. I really miss the old xbox that you could run XBMC on for a great experience.

What about you? Are you interested in the OUYA console at all?

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