Today in Connected Consumer
How disruptable is the console gaming market? More than 31,000 VC-wannabees on Kickstarter think its ripe for it and as of this morning had pledged more than $4 million to back Ouya, a startup which is proposing to market a $99 Android-powered game console that comes with its own SDK so that anyone can develop games (and presumably other apps) for the system. That’s more than four times the financing Ouya was looking for when it posted its pitch two days ago. Judging from the comments on the Ouya Kickstarter page, however, quite a lot of those backers appear to be developers, who are no doubt keen to get their hands dirty with a fully hackable and open platform, unconstrained by licensing, publishing and retail fees and restrictions. Whether they’re making a sound business judgment is another question. Ouya’s management has a good pedigree. It’s led by industry veteran Julie Uhrman, who has logged time at Vivendi Universal, IGN and GameFly. But it still feels like a long shot to me.