The Ouya Android game console project has gotten a lot of attention. In just three days, it's raised over $4 million on Kickstarter, and became the fastest Kickstarter project to reach $1 million. It's being marketed as a game console for budget gamers and hackers, offering an Android backbone and a $99 price tag to people who want another option beyond the big three console makers.
Mobile gaming has come a long way and many Android games are impressive even when compared against home console games. The Ouya could help that, but that's not what makes it most appealing as a home entertainment device. When the Ouya comes out, it will at best have a few console-oriented games and a lot of smartphone and tablet games that will hopefully work with the gamepad. No matter how fast you can get developer kits to programmers, it takes time to get optimized games on a system. The PlayStation Vita is proof of that.
The Ouya caught my attention not because of what it could do for gaming, but for what it could do for home entertainment. Specifically, it could fill the hole Google has dug and been unable to fill itself with Google TV. Google TV had a lot of potential, but a shaky first year with expensive products and a slow trickle of devices have made its future uncertain, and Google was strangely silent about it at this year's Google I/O.
At its heart, the Ouya will be an Android device that can output 1080p video to an HDTV. It will have a Tegra3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and run Android 4.0. It will also be easy to root. This is a $99 streaming media device that could give the few Google TV products (and other non-Google TV streaming video devices) a run for their money, all without using Google TV's interface. There are a lot of streaming media apps on Android that work great on smartphones and tablets and are must-haves on Google TV products, and that could easily work on the Ouya console. Twitch.tv has already been confirmed as a feature on the Ouya, and long-established services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, HBO GO, and even Crunchyroll could be put on the system with a few clicks.
Don't think about what games could be put on the Ouya. Think about what smartphone and tablet apps could be put on the Ouya. Web browsers, chat clients, social networking apps, and tons of home entertainment apps could fill up the console with content that outshines any Android game. Since it has built-in Bluetooth, a wireless mouse and keyboard could turn it into the simple, powerful, full-featured Google TV box we've been waiting for, without Google TV or the clunkiness that comes with it.
Of course, this means users will have to get past Ouya's own clunkiness and how intrusive the interface will be. Ease of use for any of these apps depends on how open Ouya wants its own system to be, and whether it will be designed to be anything but a game loader. The root-friendliness of the Ouya will help, though. Even if the default Ouya interface is completely useless for anything but selecting games, if it's an open platform and rootable, Android developers and hackers will be able to work with it and turn it into its own Google TV-like platform. Ouya could be the first platform to host a home theater version of CyanogenMod. Google TV devices have felt very cramped and limited, and an open Android device that outputs to HDTVs while having a home theater-friendly form factor could be just what Android has needed to make it big in the living room.
This is all very optimistic, especially considering Sascha Segan's concerns about the legitimacy of the Ouya Kickstarter. It could become mismanaged vaporwear, or an outright scam. The developers themselves are overly optimistic about how it will turn out, and even though they've made several times their desired funding, there's no guarantee it will actually happen. If it does, though, we could have the Android-based home entertainment plaything we've been waiting for, even without games.
For more on Kickstarter, see PCMag's recent Q&A with co-founder Yancey Strickler.