OUYA Game Console First Impressions

Behold, the day of days has arrived: Kickstarted darling Ouya, the Android-powered video game console, is available to the public. It sold out on Amazon in just a few hours and I’ll bet that other retailers are finding their stocks a little low, too.

I backed Ouya on Kickstarter shortly before the close of the nearly $8.6M funding round last summer, and I received my backer unit a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had some time to play several of the games and poke around the device a bit.

Hardware
Powering the Ouya is a NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage (which is expandable via USB). It offers HDMI output and both 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet for connectivity. Its USB port is 2.0, and a keyboard is a great fit for it. There is also a micro USB port for connecting the device to a computer for debugging games, accessing storage, and more.

OUYA

Physically, it weighs a little more than half a pound and is approximately 3” cubed, give or take a little. It comes with the game console itself, one controller, an HDMI cable, two AA batteries for the controller, and a power adapter.

OUYA

Controllers connect via Bluetooth and sport 15 buttons, plus a trackpad in the center of the controller that responds to touch operations pretty well. Each is powered by a pair of AA batteries underneath interchangeable faceplates. If Ouya really takes off, I anticipate a whole section of CES devoted to Ouya controller faceplates and console casing replacements (it’s super easy to take apart!).

OUYA

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