Ouya Ships 1,200 Developer Consoles, Offers Sneak Peek at Console UI

We’ve been following the Ouya open source gaming console ever since it raised an astonishing amount of money in a very short amount of time. The latest development is that Ouya has 1,200 developer consoles on pallets ready to ship as promised, which is a good sign for the future viability of the ambitious project. Ouya says that the consoles will be on devs’ doorsteps within days.

The contents of the package include a welcome letter, a pair of D-pad controllers, the console itself, HDMI and micro-USB cables, and a power adapter. (Batteries are included.) The D-pads and console are both transparent to show devs the guts inside; the final product will look different.

Ouya shipping

The console now includes a micro-USB port and a fan to aid cooling, and as promised, users can open the thing up and hack away. Developers will also get a taste of what the UI will eventually look like, and they can get cracking on developing games for the new device with the free ODK.

Ouya UI mockup
Ouya UI mockup

There’s a lot of excitement mixed with a dose of skepticism surrounding Ouya, but seeing the hardware actually leave the shipping dock is a great sign. The project has a long way to go, of course; even assuming devs don’t find too many bugs to deal with, mass-producing the devices will be another major challenge, and there needs to be a healthy game ecosystem for anyone other than interested hobbyists to plunk down $99 for their own unit.