The Rasberry Pi is still cheaper, but when you factor in a power supply, box and controller maybe not much cheaper than a OUYA.

The OUYA like the Rasberry Pi is an open system that you can mod.

I like both and be interesting to see how they both do.

Perhaps no need in the future to buy anymore expensive media centers, just get one of these with a wireless controller and open source software and there you go.

It really depends what you're looking to get out of it.

The Ouya is trying to be a more full-featured item with a dedicated purpose--that's not to say it won't work for other things, while the raspberry pi is more dedicated to be open and used as either a prototyping board or embedded for generic purposes. The Arduino needs mention here as well as that fits right in.

That being said, I've seen a rasp pi used as the equivalent to a Roku mounted carefully inside the shell of an actual TV with little extra cost.

Personally, I'm getting an Ouya because I want to see more competition on the console market even though I'm more of a PC gamer (I just can't play FPS without a mouse/keyboard combo). There were days when making games were (relatively) cheap and fun--not just a reuse of a game engine with different levels and calling it a brand new game (Call of Duty, I'm looking at you since MW2 is still $60). Back in my day, those were called expansion packs.

This is also the same reason I'm supporting indie game developers, because I can get a game that's more fun for a lot less since there is no huge staff to pay and bump up the costs of the game. Recently finished Far Cry 3 and it took 10 minutes for the credits to roll with probably over 1,000 people being mentioned. I loved Duke Nukem 3D and IIRC, it was made by less than 20 people.

But anyways, I digress and rant waaaaay too much.

Ouya, as I see it is a way for those in the indie community to get exposure, to bring real competition back to the gaming industry. With the tools that are out there now, someone could make games on par with some of the great PS1/N64/Saturn classics easily and fast and that are actually enjoyable.

The Raspberry Pi is great as a generic embedded system for modding capability, but can be much more. I see full-packaged systems like the Ouya as a shortcut for people to do it themselves with something like the pi. You could probably build an Ouya with a rasp, but would you want to? Even if you want to and had the capabilities, you'd probably end up just getting an Ouya anyways because of the work that would go into it would outweigh the all-together piece.

While I may seem to hold high regard for the Ouya, I'm still using a raspberry pi myself to put together my car PC.

P.S. Watch the double posts when they're that close together. We have an edit button for a reason.

isn't the Pi meant more as an educational tool for learning how to program and such?

@ghyt

The Rasp Pi is a full fledged linux system. It just is incredibly small and has limited resources. Most use it as a prototyping board, but it isn't limited to that.

It would seem even Nvidia is going to create an Android device, which is a portable games console. Although I shouldn't think it will be as cheap or as moddable as the ONYA or Rasberry Pi.