OUYA Kickstarter Ends With Over $8.5 Million In Funding
It's been a long and very exciting ride, but the Kickstarter campaign for the Android-based game console OUYA has finally come to a close. The last few pledges are still trickling in, but with the timer reading 0 seconds left to go, OUYA has attracted 63,308 backers and pulled in a whopping $8,584,440 in funding. And here we thought Double Fine made a lot of money with its Kickstarter.
The Kickstarter for OUYA has been a smashing success ever since the beginning. It was only a matter of hours before it surpassed its $950,000 goal, raising a record-breaking $2.5 million in the first 24 hours. Since that first day, we've been given announcement after announcement, as OUYA revealed partnerships with the likes of iHeartRadio, VEVO, OnLive, XBMC, and TuneIn. There are also the game deals, with developer Robomodo announcing that a prequel to its upcoming game Human Element will be exclusive to OUYA, and Square Enix promising that Final Fantasy III will be a launch title for the console. Just yesterday we were told that the OUYA team is in talks with Namco Bandai, so we're looking forward to more details about that.
Naturally, pledges slowed as the Kickstarter campaign went on, but in the past 24 hours they've seen quite a boost. OUYA has managed to raise nearly $1 million in the last 24 hours alone, partially due to the last-minute backers who were getting in before everything wrapped up, but also because OUYA announced yesterday that backers can get four controllers with their console by upping their pledge amount by $90. It was obviously an appreciated option, and one that ended up making OUYA quite a bit more money in its final hours.
Now that the Kickstarter campaign has ended, the OUYA team will take the millions they've raised and get to work on making this console a reality. Should everything go as planned, the first OUYA consoles will be heading out to backers in March 2013, and after that we'll see if OUYA sinks or swims. There are still plenty of people out there who think OUYA is destined for failure, while many others think that this console will be, for lack of a better term, a game-changer. Stay tuned, because the end of the Kickstarter only marks the beginning of the OUYA story.