On Thursday, Ouya’s Kickstarter campaign came to an end with the project having raised nearly $8.6 million from 63,416 backers. The startup is led by former IGN executive Julie Uhrman, whose goal was to build an affordable console based on the Android operating system. In an effort to gain additional funding, Uhrman enlisted the help of crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter on July 10th. The project was an immediate hit, reaching its funding goal of $950,000 in less than eight hours.
The Ouya will be a $99 Android-powered gaming console that is built for TV screens. The device is equipped with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and features 1GB of RAM, 8GB of flash storage, HDMI output, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a USB 2.0 port.
Throughout the campaign, Uhrman and her team launched new partnerships that saw Ouya gain additional content from providers such as OnLive, VEVO, iHeartRadio and XBMC. The Ouya game console is expected to ship to Kickstarter backers in March 2013.
