Ouya



"The revolution will be televised."

The Ouya is an Android-based microconsole, famous for proving that a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign does not necessarily mean a commercial success, or even a good product. Despite the initial hype, it was too weak even for the time, the hardware had a number of issues, and it even had a botched launch, with backers only receiving their units well after it was in stores.

And yet, since it was dead-easy to port from Android (in fact you can just install most Android .apks), it quickly amassed a library of well over a thousand titles — mostly mobile games, sure, but also media players and emulators for several classic systems (most up to PS1 run well, but N64 is very hit-and-miss). For a $99 machine, it was not a terrible deal. Then again, it was not a fantastic deal either, so it didn't take off. The company was acquired by Razer in 2015, and the console was discontinued.

Is it worth getting one now? No, it's quite outdated, and plenty other devices can do the same things better. But if you happen to bump into one dirt cheap in some clearance or garage sale, you can still squeeze some use out of it. You can grab its games from the Internet Archive. You can even install a somewhat newer version of Android on it, check the XDA Developers forum for more on that.

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