Ouya - new gaming system!

  

Ouya. No, that's not an exclamation of alarm - it's the name of a new kind of open-source gaming system which runs Android and connects to your TV, offering the value of mobile gaming on a large screen. For just £99, it's priced well below modern consoles, but can it really be considered a challenger? Ahead of its high street release in just a few weeks time, we plugged on in to find out. Has this Kickstarter sensation been worth the wait?

                         PROS

In purely physical terms, Ouya is a hit. Famous designer Yves Bachar came up with the casing, which exudes a subtle yet appealing charm. The wireless Bluetooth controller is also decent, offering a comfortable button layout and responsive dual analogue sticks. Spin the diminutive Ouya console around, and you'll discover an impressive range of connections, including HDMI, USB, Micro USB and Ethernet. Add Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to the mix, and you've got one seriously well-connected gaming platform.

Because it's running Android, Ouya can potentially play all of the best games Google's mobile OS has to offer. Titles like Final Fantasy III, The Bard's Tale and Canabalt are available right now, and look amazing on your LCD TV. Future games like Sonic CD, Shadowgun and Dead Trigger are expected to arrive soon, and will most likely play much better on Ouya than on your phone or tablet, thanks to that effective joypad. It also runs emulators, which means you can turn it into a retro gaming monster.

For those of you sick of spending £40 on games for your Xbox 360 or PS3, Ouya's pricing structure will be of interest. Every game on the Ouya store can be downloaded and sampled for free - developers use in-app purchases to make their cash. Some will ask you to pay a flat fee to unlock the full game, while others adopt the free-to-play approach and tempt you with in-game items or currency.

                    CONS

A games console is only as good as the games available on it, and at the moment Ouya doesn't really offer anything that's likely to get hardcore gamers excited. Many of the titles on the store are shallow mobile offerings adapted to use the controller, and few will keep your attention for more than a ten minutes. Ouya needs killer software, and hopefully that will come as 2013 progresses.

Although it's priced attractively at £99, Ouya seems less appealing when you consider you can now pick up a PS3 console for just £40 more - and that has a massive library of amazing titles, including The Last of Us and Gran Turismo 5. Although I'd love to be proven wrong, it's unlikely that titles of that standard will ever appear on Ouya. Mobile prices mean mobile experiences, and they don't tend to translate very well to the big screen.

                 CONCLUSION

Ouya has plenty of potential, and it's great to see a new company entering a competitive marketplace - and getting plenty of attention in the process. However, at the moment Ouya feels like it's just putting mobile games on your TV. These games have been designed to fill a few spare minutes on the bus to work, not to keep you entertained for hours at a time.

If the console can score some notable exclusives then it could change things forever, but many developers are likely to play it safe and merely port their existing Android games to the console.

Another issue is raw power - Ouya's Tegra 3 processor is about to be surpassed by Tegra 4, and with the PS4 and Xbox One hitting store shelves this Christmas, dedicated gamers are unlikely to be satisfied with what Ouya currently offers. Having said all that, I sincerely hope that Ouya can carve itself a niche in the market: the more competition the merrier, especially with pricy new next-gen consoles around the corner.