In an ever competitive console market dominated by the big players such as the Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii U, lone comes this new pint sized competitor that wants to make its mark The Ouya (pronounced like Booyah without the B), an Android powered open gaming console first popped up at the crowd funding website Kickstarter as a poll to gauge how many people were actually interested in it and after an overwhelming response started its money raising campaign on the site which saw the Ouya project set a record as the fastest to raise $1 million just within eight hours and raised $3.7 million in three days. The kickback from the investment was that the console will be priced at only $99. On fune 25, 2013, the Ouya was released to the public. It's only a matter of time after that before it makes its way to Bangladesh.

With the steep rise in mobile gaming thanks to the new breed of smartphones, Ouya looks to improve on that by offering 1080p Full HD visuals for its games, with already a hundred of them ready as launch titles. The hardware on the console itself is good enough considering its price, outfitted with the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of SDRAM and 8GB flash memory, if that doesn't satiate your thirst and if you're specially the kind of person who needs to have the top notch hardware running on your machines, the Ouya allows you to modify it any way you choose with off the shelf hardware. This is where the word open comes in. With their minds set on the console being open, the developers have allowed for the Ouya to be completely open to

customization whether it be the hardware or software, even you can create your own games if you have the coding skills. It also comes with apps such as Flixster, Twitch.tv, Tunein among others that can be downloaded from its online store via its built-in Wi-Fi and Ethernet support. The games themselves don't come in discs and can only be downloaded online for now. Plus, each and every game each will be offered to you free you only pay if you really like it and want the complete game The developers claim that you will never be charged for games unless you CHOOSE to make a purchase Great news indeed!

Now time to look at the trusty sidekick of every console gamer, the controller. Ouya's controller design can easily be said to resemble and probably derive from the Xbox controller but the added touch pad in the middle of the controller is poised to bring a new dimension to the Ouya experience. You can connect up to four of these controllers and play multiplayer with your friends any time you choose. The Ouya's personalized Android interface also looks very similar to the Xbox dashboard.

The Ouya definitely sets out to be the console that wants to bring the games on our phones and more to the comfort of our living rooms. It is a very intriguing project in itself but only time will tell if it has really tapped into something that resonates with gamers. So would you buy an Ouya and do the features make it a viable choice for the casual gamer? Let us know at our Facebook page.