Ouya’s Big Day on Kickstarter

It is no secret that I love Kickstarter. I have backed a few projects and would have back many more if the timing was right with my finances and committments. Here are some interesting facts concerning some of the biggest noise makers (and money makers) on Kickstarter.com to date.

Yesterday a video game project called Ouya became the eighth project in Kickstarter history to raise more than a million dollars, and the fastest ever to do so. Ouya hit the total in just over eight hours, shattering the previous record. Here’s how long it took each million-dollar project to cross the threshold:

1. OUYA — 8 hours and 22 minutes
2. Double Fine Adventure — 17 hours and 30 minutes
3. Pebble — 27 hours
4. Wasteland 2 — 41 hours
5. Shadowrun Returns — 7 days
6. The Order of the Stick — 27 days, 5 hours
7. Amanda Palmer — 27 days, 12 hours
8. Elevation Dock — 57 days

As you might expect, Ouya also has the biggest single-day total in Kickstarter history. It received more than $2.5 million in pledges from its launch on Tuesday at 8:44am to Wednesday at 8:44am. Here are the ten biggest 24-hour tallies on Kickstarter so far:

1. OUYA — $2,589,687.77
2. Double Fine Adventure — $1,064,652.05
3. Pebble — $863,132.92
4. Wasteland 2 — $555,407.84
5. Shadowrun Returns — $378,008.28
6. Amanda Palmer — $223,348.50
7. The Icarus Deception — $178,194.00
8. Elevation Dock — $161,507.00
9. Penny Arcade Sells Out — $151,221.17
10. gTar — $138,891.00

Ouya’s big day lead to another Kickstarter record: dollars pledged in a single day. On February 9th Kickstarter saw more than $1 million in pledges in a day for the first time. Until yesterday, Kickstarter's biggest day was on April 12th, when nearly $1.9 million was pledged. The amount pledged yesterday, July 10th? $3,174,820.
       
So what is Ouya, you ask? Ouya is a game console built on the Android operating system. Its creators pitched it as a platform for independent developers, and it clearly has big potential. In just 24 hours, 20,000 people bought an Ouya console — a product they had never heard of before yesterday. By way of comparison, Microsoft sold 326,000 Xbox 360 consoles in its first week after many millions of marketing dollars.
      
Congratulations to the Ouya team and their backers on the incredible debut!