Ouya console review | specification

Games are ideally enjoyed in the living room on a big screen, but the best developers in the world are all working on games for phones and tablets, which is where the big money is today. Ouya wants to let users enjoy these games on a console, and make it easy for developers already well versed in Android development to create fresh titles that can take advantage of a big screen. The Ouya console will cost no more than US$ 99 (approximately Rs 5,455) and will be entirely open source. The idea is so powerful that the developers have already raised nearly $5 million via an online donation drive and have been received enthusiastically by the online press, even without any physical product ready to be demonstrated. Console games today are far more expensive than mobile games, and take much longer to create. Mobile games, on the other hand, can be extremely profitable without much upfront investment, but aren’t always easy to control, and for the Ouya team at least, aren’t as enjoyable. That’s why they want to put actual physical controllers back into gamers’ hands and make them go back to the big-screen experience they’ve moved away from. Beyond the hardware, Ouya wants to build its own game distribution system, much like today’s App Stores, which could negate the costs associated with retail and promotion.The box will be connected to your TV and could also serve as a portal for online entertainment. Even this will be geared towards gaming, with streams from the video community Twitch.tv integrated at launch time. Another defining feature of the platform is that all games will have at least some free component, such as free playable demos, but full freemium games with small paid chapters or upgrades will also be encouraged. Open-source also means that Ouya encourages hackers to put together their own accessories and even “root” the system, or in other words, add custom enhancements and tweaks. The only hitch is that none of this actually exists yet. The team’s Kickstarter page details the current status as “far along” in terms of the user interface and design, but the hardware is still only in prototype form. Having raised so much money, the team should be able to commence mass production soon, but an exact timeline is unknown. Developers can apply for the first round of kits in order to have titles ready in time for the public launch, and those who contributed a certain amount via the fundraising campaign will also receive their consoles before they become available in retail. Contributions will be accepted at www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console/ till the 8th of August, so you’ll need to act quickly if you want to be one of the first Ouya gamers.