Ouya has reached another milestone toward its goal of releasing a crowd-funded gaming console to the masses.
The West L.A. firm announced on its blog yesterday it had opened its submissions for Ouya games to all comers.
According to the post, each game will be reviewed by the company before listing in the store and available for download when the console is released on March 28.
Previously, the company had been accepting some submissions during a test period, but as of Friday developers at large will have a chance to get their games approved and ready to download onto the buzzed-about console.
As an added incentive to gamemakers, once the console is sent out Ouya will feature the three most popular games and their publishers in a company-made short documentary about the console.
For Ouya, even reaching this point is an accomplishment many believed unlikely. The console, which will run on the Android operating system, was funded by donations through Kickstarter. Over the course of two months in 2012, more than 60,000 people chipped in $8.6 million mostly though pre-sales. Ouya was to be made by off-the-shelf parts and play free-to-download games.
Critics at the time wrote that Ouya stood little chance of releasing on schedule. Large companies such as Nintendo and Sony routinely fall behind schedule, so what hope does an unknown and untested startup have in reaching its goals?
Making the task even more challenging was a recent announcement by founder and Chief Executive Julie Uhrman that Ouya will be releasing an updated console every year.
But since reaching a funding goal, the console has hit all its anticipated benchmarks on time. All that’s left is the fast approaching release date.