The Ouya console, which was funded by Kickstarter, launched on Tuesday to good success. Not everyone is happy though, while some of the original Kickstarter funders have yet to get their consoles they were promised after donating. The original Ouya Kickstarter allowed for backers to pay $99 and receive one of the consoles and a controller in return. This backer tier even read this, “guarantee we will have one available for you, before it gets to stores”. Even with this guarantee, many of the backers are still waiting to receive their consoles. The founder of Ouya, Julie Uhrman, informed backers in a update titled “Gonna fix this” about the current status of the problem.
Some of you have not yet received your Ouya – and, to you, I apologise. I did not promise to ship to most of you before we hit store shelves. I promised to ship to all of you.
Ouya is not taking all of the blame though, saying that the delays are the fault of a unnamed Chinese partner and delivery company DHL. The head of operations at Ouya, Ken Stephens, said this about the problem,
Over the past few months, we encountered and conquered many challenges spanning both hardware and software in order to bring the best product we could to market. We have tried to make sure that the challenges we faced did not impact our early supporters, but unfortunately we came up short.
Despite of all this, Develop has reported that the consoles have entirely sold out on the US Amazon and the Gamestop website. The console has not had complete success however, with GAME’s website still reporting that the Ouya is in stock. The UK Amazon will be getting stock for the Ouya on the 2nd of July. It has also been reported by Polygon that the sales of the Ouya in the US might even be exaggerated, as some stories of the console have small to none presence in the retail stores.
