Ouya Open Gaming Platform Sails Past Original Funding Goals

The open source Ouya gaming platform, billed as "a new kind of video game console," has hit another milestone, and this one is a funding milestone. Last night, the Los Angeles-based project, which had set a goal of getting $950,000 of total funding on crowdsourced funding site Kickstarter, blew past its original goal with a whopping $8.6 million in contributions. What's more the project now has an official website at Ouya.tv. And, at the site, you can pre-order the open, Android-based console for $109, which includes shipping.

The team at Ouya is expecting to ship the first consoles in the first quarter of next year. As we covered this week, the Ouya team has provided an enthusiastic summary of its new partners:

 "We just added game streaming through OnLive! Final Fantasy will be on OUYA...and we have an exclusive game! And VEVO has agreed to put their music videos on OUYA, XBMC adds a streaming media app, with TuneIn and iHeartRadio adding music!"

This console, of course, is getting a lot of attention in its vaporware stage, but that may be because nobody has really cracked the open gaming platform concept yet. Just as millions of users have taken to open media center concepts such as Boxee, gamers might appreciate a truly open platform. Certainly, people at large have been willing to throw dollars at Kickstarter to get such a platform going.

It's too early to tell exactly what the experience will be with Ouya, but the $109 pre-order does buy you a console, a controller and, presumabley, access to a fairly big library of games, many of them free. This platform remains worth watching.