I am finally sitting down in the evenings to play a game on Ouya. It feels good, I gotta say. I tried a few demos but only found one game I felt I really, really liked so far: Polarity, which I hate to have to note isn't listed anywhere on this site at all. Now that I'm really getting into it, here are some thoughts on the Ouya thus far:

To begin w/, the user interface has gotten a lot better since I got it as a Kickstarter backer but still needs work. The seemingly endless updates I had to endure to get the new interface after not turning my Ouya on were interminable but now that I'm there, I am reasonable pleased with the progress so far. I am finding everything I want to w/ only a little difficulty. The problem though is a little difficulty is still too much. The main problem I am having is figuring out which games I even want to try. Based on whatever selection criteria they are using, I am just not able to tell the difference between a game that feels at home on the bigscreen or just a good game from elsewhere that was ported over and only kind of works. They seem to have both in equal measure, which I feel is a pretty poor ration considering we are talking about featured games here. I can find a game I want if I know what it is but last night, for example, I wanted to find a good (non-Final Fantasy III) RPG to try out and just couldn't figure out how to seperate the wheat from the chaff. I find I have a problem w/ both the 3DS eStore and PSN as well but I still think Ouya needs more work than either of those.

As far as hardare itself is concerned, I have thought and still think it's a good little box. The controller is really great---and I say that despite the fact that it has two major issues: an uncomfortable d-pad and buttons getting stuck under the face plate. It's little, cubic form factor is attractive and I feel like the Tegra-3 has plenty of juice to allow creative devs to make beautiful and good running games. It is really nice that you can use whatever controller you want with it too. I really have no issues w/ it, though I think my expectations might have been lower than some as far as graphics, especially.

I think the big question, however, w/ Ouya is the games library. I think it is hard to complain if you look at what you are really getting. This is a brand new console that for under two hundred bucks overall, you can get both the console and enough good games to keep you occupied for months and months. What other console has ever offered that this close to launch? Game Boy Advance, maybe. They are hard to find but there's legit exclusives and legit ports all over the Ouya library. There is a comparative wealth of good games compared to any new  console ever. True, there are tons of bad games which is all anyone seems to want to talk about but, at least if you are a fan of indy games, Ouya is shaping up to be the best console ever.

In any case, at the end of the day, I am still happy that I supported Ouya's kickstarter and I am pleased w/ playing games on the device. I confess I am a bit dissapointed with it overall but it's only been officially out for a couple a months and I have been pretty dissapointed with any new system I've bought at lauch. Ouya has a ways to go--and a seemingly unreasonable amount of hate going its way--but I think w/ the progress they've made so far, it's a good bet that they will get there.