Android-powered gaming console Ouya is taking the gaming world by storm. The Los Angeles-based start-up company had launched a Kickstarter project earlier in July this year, to raise funds which would aid its production dreams. The company has bettered its $950, 000 pledge, which was achieved easily in July itself, and has managed to raise a whopping $8.5 million!

Ouya (pronounced OOO-Yah), the $99 Android games console, finished its four-week drive on the crowd sourced funding site Kickstarter.com, raising an impressive $8,596,178 in the process. With 63,413 backers, the latest entrant in the gaming console arena improved on its $950,000 target by 900 per cent. Ouya's success story makes it a model for up-and-coming Kickstarter campaigns.

"A lot of people were surprised that we wanted to do something as audacious as taking on the console industry, which hasn't changed much for 20 years with its closed platforms and content that costs more than anywhere else. But people are really excited about somebody wanting to buck the trend," said Ouya's chief executive Julie Uhrman.

Ouya's hardware packs a mean punch and the console will have a Tegra 3 quad-core processor. It also has an HDMI connection that supports 1080p HD, Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of storage capacity. A wireless controller will come as standard and it will also have a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, and USB 2.0.

The hackable console may have surpassed its target, gathering laurels along the way, but naysayers doubt whether Ouya has the requisite steam to ship by the March 2013 deadline. In a bid to quash skeptics, Ouya has taken on board game developers like Square Enix and Namco Bandai. The company has also solicited Muffi Ghadiali's (who worked on Amazon kindle) help.

Additionally, independent developers like Cliffhanger productions and Rapture Games Studios will make "Shadowrun Online" and "Gunblitz" games, respectively, for the company. "Gunblitz" will be Ouya's launch title.

Moreover, with online gaming havens like OnLive and Gaikai garnering popularity, tech pundits aver that the future of gaming is not in hackable hardware, but in the cloud. Ouya, it would seem, is in step with the future of gaming and recently partnered cloud gaming service OnLive.

Priced at $99, Ouya is expected to go on sale in March 2013 with the developer edition set to ship in Dec.12. T