The developers of the Ouya $99 video game console are almost ready to start shipping the first units to developers. The developer consoles will leave the factory on December 28th, and could start arriving in developers’ hands a few days later.

Initially the only folks that are getting these gaming systems will be people who pledged $699 or more for a dev kit during the Ouya’s Kickstarter campaign. Final production units aren’t scheduled to ship until March or later.

Ouya

The Ouya is a tiny video game console featuring an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, Google Android software with a custom user interface (and a custom game store), and a wireless game controller.

If you didn’t have $699 to spend, but backed the project at a lower level, Ouya systems should start shipping in March, 2013. Customers that pre-order from the Ouya website now that the Kickstarter campaign is over can expect devices to arrive in April

That’s assuming everything stays on schedule, but so far the company has been keeping its promises. The initial developer consoles always had an estimated ship date of December.

While the idea of a cheap, hackable video game console that can also be used as an inexpensive media center is pretty cool, the hardware might look a bit dated by the time the product is widely available.

Nobody expects new PlayStation, Xbox, or Wii hardware every year, but mobile chip makers put out newer, faster processors once or twice a year. We’re already starting to see phones and tablets with speedy processors like the Samsung Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15 chip or Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip which make NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip look positively sluggish.

Still, if enough Ouya devices hit the streets, it could pose a popular platform for developers, and as Nintendo has shown time and again, you don’t necessarily need the fastest hardware to compete in the video game world. You just need to attract developers who know how to make games that are fun to play.

via Engadget

 

 

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3 replies on “Ouya will ship first dev kits for $99 Android gaming console in December”

  1. What’s even more stupid is the fact the chose a nVidia SoC with a hefty price tag. Even with a great deal from nV, it’s still an unwise investment as they can’t jump to another SoC now that they are in the nV boat.
    It’s like they didn’t plan ahead enough…
    I’d have chosen a Broadcom or even a Samsung chip myself, way less licensing (extortion?) money, but who am I? 😀

  2. It’d be cool of they offered upgradeable features. (RAM, storage, etc) That way it might hold out longer in the long run as I also think that, by the time this is released, the hardware might be slightly out of date.

  3. I’ve already pre-ordered one of these devices. All things said and done should this console not perform well it’s still going to be a great multimedia device and I imagine it’ll be a target for android custom ROM builds or even Linux which is fine by me. It’s still going to be far better quality build what we get from the Chinese made Android Sticks with no GPL code.

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