The Ouya (stylized as OUYA) is a microconsole running on the Android operating system that was developed by Ouya Inc. Julie Uhrman founded the project in 2012, bringing in designer Yves Béhar to collaborate on the design of the project and Muffi Ghadiali as VP of Product Management to put together the engineering team. Development was funded via Kickstarter, raising $8.5 million and becoming the website's fifth-highest earning project in its history at the time.
All systems can be used as development kits, allowing any Ouya owner to also be a developer, without the need for licensing fees. All games were initially required to have some kind of free-to-play aspect, whether that be completely free, has a free trial, or has purchasable upgrades, levels, or other in-game items. This requirement was later removed.
Despite the successful Kickstarter campaign, sales of the Ouya were lackluster, causing financial issues for Ouya Inc. and forcing them to wind down its business. Its software assets were sold to Razer Inc., who announced the discontinuation of the Ouya console on July 27, 2015. The Ouya has been considered a commercial failure as a result.
Source: Wikipedia, "Ouya", available under the CC-BY-SA License.