Crowdsourced Ouya Console Meets, Surpasses Fundraising Goal

Yesterday, while I was cooking dinner, my brother texted me about the Ouya console, asking if I would get one. Then about an hour later he texted me to say that he plunked down the $99 necessary to reserve his system when the thing launches.

As it turns out, that contribution was one of more than 20,000 that have decided that Ouya is something worth supporting: within the first 24 hours of its fundraising, the Ouya Kickstarter project reached its $950,000 goal. And as of this writing, the project has raised nearly three times that sum, currently sitting at a steadily rising $2.7 million.

There hasn’t been this kind of huge success for video game Kickstarter projects since Double Fine’s now infamous campaign broke the website’s speed record. Amazingly, that project ended its monumental campaign with $3.3 million, absolutely crushing their goal of $400,000. And with 28 days left to go, Ouya is probably going to surpass the $3.3 million mark sometime today. In addition, an update on the Kickstarter page reveals that Ouya head honcho Julie Uhrman explains the company’s current situation:

“We are blown away by your support. With your help, we just raised $2 million. And it’s only the first day.

Now we want to blow you away. The biggest thing for us right now: we are working on our stretch goals, what we can do if we raise more money. It might take us a few days to figure that out, and we want your help.

Tell us what you would like the stretch goals to be at ideas@ouya.tv.

And, if you want to vote on what games you want to see on OUYA… tell us here…https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ouya.”

So at this point, it’s guaranteed that the Ouya will be a reality. I’m still on the fence about dropping my own hundred bucks to get one—right now, that is, if only because I don’t really have a hundred bucks to throw around on a new video game system at this minute. At the same time, the fact that they’ve hit their mark so quickly, and will likely have tons of extra money to play with when all is said and done, makes me want to get in on the ground floor and reap the benefits of founder status.

What do you think? Are you gonna get an Ouya? I’m still deciding…fortunately, I have 28 days to think about it, not to mention the aforementioned stretch goals they have to come up with…

Don’t forget to scope out their Kickstarter right here.