My OUYA arrived Yesterday!

So I was going to create this last night but I managed to kind of screw things up. Long story short, I should know better to use the wireless in that part of my house. It works but its weak and that may have been the cause of the 1 hour+ update. I realized my mistake and tried an old cable I had lying around but I think it was too late. Anyway..unboxing time!

After removing it from its sturdy brown wrapped container (and after 18$ is custom fees..WTF!??!) the OUYA was packaged in an attractive black box with somewhat shinier black letters that surprisingly spelled out O..U..Y..A..

Here are the pics of the box...

Once I removed the tape circles that seem to be so in vogue and slid the inner case out...I found a friendly little note inside..

Pulling back the note revealed the OUYA and the controller...

The "broken" look of the controller was a little alarming at first until I realized what they were trying to tell me..."Put Batteries in here!" It was not shipped loose but instead it was pressure fit into one of the attachment points. I was a little relieved but moreso impressed with the design consideration there..

Assembled! 

This is all that was underneath. Batteries, HDMI Cable and Power supply. There is also a lovely paper booklet that has the OUYA logo on it and....that's about it. Other than the obligatory safety jargon and compliance statements it is pretty much useless. Not that I think it needs more instructions but I always default to the lowest common denominator. Some folks just need a little help so even a quick little how to on the batteries and hook up may be helpful to some.

Speaking of which, it took a minute for me to realize that both sides of the controller open up like the picture above to allow for 1 AA battery in each side. The pull out string in the battery compartment is actually pretty sturdy and made it a little difficult to seat the battery properly in each side. However a good shove down in there and they were ready to go!

I am not sure how many remove and installs those covers are designed to take but I am hoping its a fair bit.

Here is the OUYA and the controller free of their confines

Both still have the protective film on as that is Mrs. Soup's job to remove...it's some weird kind of fetish of hers but harmless so she gets to have at 'er!

The side is etched with the names of the backers that paid for that priviledge...such as Notch (minecraft) and FourZeroTwo (former COD community spokesperson) to name a couple.

The bottom is vented as there is a small fan at the bottom that either sucks air in or more likely forces it out

The all important connection ports! It looks like there is a micro HDMI out as well. I was wondering if it was a Micro USB connection but that seemed odd especially since there is a standard USB port available. I think I have a micro HDMI cable around...maybe I'll give it a shot.

Here is is turned on and roughly hooked up. I will put it in it's proper place later. 

 I threw it on the big screen to see how it would fair and it did...ok. The initial splash screen and the update screen both looked pretty nice. Not as sharp and clean as say the PS3 or XBOX but nowhere near the pixilated mess the wii at 480i would look like either.

 All in all I was pretty impressed. I am going to play with it for a while and see what I think. I believe one of the other writers recently acquired one as well so we will probably compare notes and throw an article together for you in the near future!

Let me know if you are online and maybe we can try some of the multiplayer games currently available.