OUYA’s ambitious indie gaming console Kickstarter project finishes with $8,580,359

Bam! OUYA, the wildly successful $99 indie gaming console, has just finished its month-long Kickstarter journey with a jaw-dropping $8,580,359 raised. Starting out with only a video, a couple of CAD mockups and the promise of Yves Behar’s design talents, the masses (some 61,000 backers) fell in love with the idea: “cracking open the last closed platform: the TV.”

As a recap, the project didn’t just win everyone over at once. It first broke the $2M barrier nearly four weeks ago, and since then, numerous announcements and sneak peeks have been made available, and undoubtedly drove up its numbers.

So far, OUYA has partnered with open source media player XBMC, iHeartRadio, VEVO, cloud gaming company OnLive, NAMCO BANDAI Games and lastly, Plex. With that came the following teasers:

OUYA’s growth as a concept also feels surprisingly democratic. Partnerships were largely dictated by backer demand, and even the adjustment of the buttons to spell O-U-Y-A came from fans.

What do you think of OUYA’s success? Is there a roof on this thing we call Kickstarter?

➤ OUYA