Ouya Android game system to ship dev copies this month
updated 09:44 pm EST, Sat December 1, 2012
Rooted, first-run units to ship December 28
Ouya, the open-source, Android-based gaming system will apparently be shipping on time, with early supporters of the system's wildly successful Kickstarter campaign slated to receive the first units in late December. Supporters who pledged as little as $95 are still expected to receive their units in March of next year. Those that contributed more to Ouya's campaign, though, will get first-run, rooted developers' systems with early SDK access.
The Ouya game console sports a quad-core Tegra 3 processor with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal flash storage. It runs Android 4.0, but the console's makers, according to Cnet, are working on optimizing Android Jelly Bean for the system.
The Kickstarter campaign for the console was among the more successful the crowdsourcing site has seen, raising $200,000 within its first two hours and hitting its funding goal within 24 hours. Eventually, the campaign went on to raise $6 million in excess of its stated goal, garnering 52,000 backers along the way.
The console represents a novel concept in the gaming world. Any app developer will be able to release their Android app to the console without having to submit the game to a publisher for approval or pay a licensing fee to the manufacturer. Instead, Ouya splits the revenue with the developer 70/30 in favor of the developer.
