Kickstarter and Ouya

Kickstarting

Recently, the concept of crowd funding is booming on the Web. It is a new way to get funding for those who do not have the necessary capital to exploit the full potential of their ideas. The way it works is actually pretty simple : you submit your idea to an online community and anyone that is willing gives you money so you can realise your project. Kickstarter is exactly that. They started in 2009, and since then, they funded business, movies, music production, journals, video games, food related products and many more great endeavours. Time magazine named them the best invention of 2010 and the best website of 2011. The project that had the most funding recently is called Ouya. Their goal was to collect 950, 000$ and it was reached in only 8 hours. They achieved to raise almost 8.6 million dollars in total which represents more than 900% of their initial goal.

Ouya : The Console

So what the hell is Ouya ? It is a new video game console based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It is supposed to be available in April of 2013 for the small price of 99$. Ouya will pack a quad-core ARM processor, which is the same type of processor that is powering your smartphone, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage space, an HDMI connection to hook up to your TV, WiFi, Bluetooth and an Ethernet port which is the port used for Internet connection. The great thing about it is that it is only as big as a Rubik's cube so you won't have to buy new furniture just to put it in your living room. The Ouya team will also provide a custom application store for games and apps that are specially made to run on the console. All the games will have to have a free-to-play form so some games will be completely free, some will be upgradable through purchase or free trials. 

Ouya is a new kind of gaming console and that means it will not compete with the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox 720. It will be a low cost entertainment device, something that we will be able to find in every family's living room. The games will be developed by geeks like me that work in their mom's basement so the consumers won't have to wait years to get updates and new versions. 

Pre-order it here.

PAF