Ouya starts hitting store shelves in US, UK and Canada

The day is finally here; Ouya is hitting stores in the US, Canada and UK today. The console, which originally made its way into the hands of Kickstarter backers back in March, will cost $99 (Rs 5,900 approx). It comes with the console itself and a controller. An extra controller costs $50 (Rs 3,000 approx). As of yet, there is no word on when the console will be available from other countries. However, it is available on some online stores that have international shipping.

Back in May, Ouya CEO Julie Urhman had revealed that the company had raised $15 million in funding from a bunch of new investors. The funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from Nvidia, Mayfield Fund, Shasta Ventures and Occam Partners. Combined with the $8.5 million it raised on Kickstarter, this brought Ouya’s total funding amount to more than $23 million.

An early version of the Ouya Developer Console

Uhrman also revealed that the company has signed more than 12,000 developers for developing games. This number has grown by more than 2,000 since April 20, when Ouya said it had seen 10,000 developers sign up for the platform.

Ouya has faced quite a bit of criticism since it shipped its developer units out. Reviews for the console have not been very good. Head of Developer Relations Kellee Santiago responds to the criticism by saying that the benchmark tests were done on an “older development system”, and that the company’s aim of providing high-quality gameplay experiences still exists.

“I think it’s fundamentally about experiences the developers make,” she said. “What are the quality of the experiences themselves? Our goal at Ouya is to empower developers to provide entertaining experiences for the living room.”