If you're addicted to video games but don't want to burn a hole in your wallet, then Ouya may be the answer to your gaming prayers. Ouya (pronounced OOO-yah), the latest entrant in the gaming world, is an Android-powered game console that is priced at $99 and has just surfaced at Kickstarter.com. Touted as the next big thing, the unexpected entrant from a Los Angeles-based start-up company is all set to take on gaming giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.

Aiming to bring back mobile gaming into your living room, Ouya has a clever marketing ploy up its sleeve to trump its rivals. The company is offering free-to-play games in the initial stages and with a prototype already in place, post-funding it expects to ship by March 2013.

Since the company is a start-up, funding is a concern. However, Ouya has backing from several investors like Digg founder Jay Adelson, Flixster founder Joe Greenstein, and Jawbone founder Hosain Rahman. Additionally, the company is devising novel ways to fund itself. Ouya launched a Kickstarter project on Tuesday and was looking to raise $950,000 to get its idea rolling. However, by the time of reporting, Ouya had blazed past the $2 million mark or double the original pledge goal, and is making everyone wonder what exactly the company would do with all that money.

Founder and CEO Julie Uhrman, the gaming industry veteran who once headed IGN's digital distribution business, would like to make gaming consoles and options cheaper and more viable. "Let's make the games less expensive to make, and less expensive to buy. With all our technological advancements, shouldn't costs be going down? Gaming could be cheaper!" wrote Julie on Ouya's Kickstarter page. She is upbeat about Ouya's prospects and feels that "It's time we brought back innovation, experimentation, and creativity to the big screen."

With innovation as its dictum, the Ouya gaming console is designed by the award-winning Jawbone Jambox designer Yves Behar. As far as specs and features go, the Ouya is about the size of a Rubik's cube and features a Tegra3 quad-core processor. In addition, it has fast buttons, a D-Pad, 8GB of Flash memory, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth connectivity, and an HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD. Its controller is dramatically pitched as a "love letter to console gaming". A touchpad feature is also available for games that are being converted from mobile devices to the TV.

Establishing a footing in the game console business has generally been a Herculean task for any company, especially a start-up. In the past, only Sony and Microsoft have had a taste of success since the video game industry's inception.

While established tech titans can afford to invest billions just to get a foothold, the story unfolds differently for Ouya. The company has already raised more than its original funding goal and it's dream of being a cheap gaming console maker to the world is well on its way to becoming a production reality.