The OUYA is something we’re waiting for wholeheartedly. It promises a new and inexpensive way to play games on your television in high definition. Fortunately, the console is launching in just a few short months, and the team at OUYA has unboxed one of their dev kits to show off just what the thing looks like.
We also happen to instantly regret not getting one of these dev kits when they were still available for purchase through the Kickstarter campaign. You can still pre-order the retail unit for a cool hundred bucks, and an extra controller that seems to be a steal at just $30, considering the wireless tech it’s rocking.
For those with short-term memories, OUYA is a console running a heavily-modified version of Android that lets you play games absolutely free before you decide to buy them. Games like Minecraft and Canabalt are going to be among the first titles to be available on the platform which launches in March 2013.
Perhaps even bigger news than a company-made video unboxing the console is developer impressions of the console. Slashgear has a video that shows a developer plugging in his OUYA and walking us through the user interface, launching an app, and how much the console can do at this point. Considering this is somewhat of an indie effort, the console seems to already have more functionality than Wii U did before the two-hour long update, which is worth mentioning considering the OUYA team still has about three months left before the console’s ship date.
The user interface we see below is different than the one we’ve seen shopped around by the OUYA team so far, so it’ll be interesting to see if that is more what it will look like or if it is purely a developer preview for now.
The controllers and hardware that comes in the development kit is strictly for developers at this point. The retail controllers and console will be brushed aluminum and completely opaque. One thing that is remaining the same is the removable handle covers for the batteries which should give the controller a great weight and balance. We’ll let you know more when we’ve got a console to review.