Ouya Kickstarter Wraps at $8.5 Million, Pre-Orders Available

The little console that could, Ouya, has moved one step closer to becoming a reality. The Android-based open platform for gaming wrapped up its Kickstarter drive this morning, pulling in a ridiculously impressive $8,596,475. Now that the funding is all wrapped up, average Joe’s can go ahead and pre-order their soon-to-be-built console.

The (so far) success of the Ouya has been an interesting story to follow. A group of folks with a crazy dream thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to play on a game console with basically no rules?” The Ouya is designed so it can be easily cracked opened, finagled and modded. The distribution method for games, too, will be wide open. They plan to offer streaming services, apps, and pretty much anything else anyone wants to make available on the console.

The Kickstarter launched with a goal of $950,000. Ouya blasted through that milestone with a quickness, going on to make about nine times that rather sizable figure by the time the drive closed with a total of 63,416 backers.

Those who contributed 100 smackers to the cause netted themselves a piece of Ouya hardware, as well as a controller. Now everyone else can pre-order an Ouya of their own by heading to the console’s official website. That’s also where you can keep up to date on all things Ouya, the latest game and service announcements, etc. The console will be $109 (shipping included) in the U.S., or $119 for overseas delivery. The console is expected to release in April of 2013.

Now that we know how much funding the Ouya has received and that everyone can snag their pre-order, we can finally focus on the most important question of all: How the heck does one pronounce “Ouya?”