Ouya CEO Julie Urhman has confirmed that the long-awaited console will not support online multiplayer games when it ships to Kickstarter backers in just over two weeks.
According to Urhman, the feature will arrive “sometime this year.” The CEO also stated that the company would be “locking content” behind servers in an effort to prevent piracy.
In addition, Urhman said future versions of the Ouya could very well be built into television sets, or at the very least, a tiny silver box.
“At the end of the day, I’d like Ouya to be on every single television, every single tablet, from every single OEM you can think of… I would love for it to be built into a television,” she added.
As TG Daily previously reported, Ouya is already prepping an updated version of the console, with Uhrman going so far as to say a new iteration of the system will be available each and every year with as much mobile processing power as possible under the hood.
In reality, a new version of the console every year may sound like a tall order – especially when you consider how many years it takes classic game consoles from Sony and Microsoft to be upgraded.
Then again, changes happen very quickly in the mobile industry and the Ouya is essentially powered by mobile hardware. Indeed, the current console is equipped with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset, but with the Tegra 4 already announced, the latest flagship chipset would be a natural fit for the next generation of the Ouya.
“If we could do it for less than $99, we would. Our strategy is very much similar to the mobile strategy. There will be a new Ouya every year. There will be an Ouya 2 and an Ouya 3,” Uhrman said back in February.
“We’ll take advantage of faster, better processors, take advantage of prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will.”
The Ouya console runs Android Jelly Bean (4.1-4.2) and is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. Additional specs include 8 GB internal flash memory, 1 GB RAM, HDMI (1080p), Nvidia ULP GeForce GPU, USB 2, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth LE 4.0, Ethernet port and a wireless controller.
It should be noted that Project Ouya project managed to raise an impressive $8,596,474 on Kickstarter, with the full support of 63,416 backers.
