Print your own Ouya video game console case

Ouya Makerbot case render. (via Thingiverse)

A new open source platform for gaming will be shipping to its Kickstarter supporters by the end of this month. The Ouya project was founded by Julie Urham, game industry pro, with the idea of delivering an experience much more personal than any other console.

That is because the user, private game developer and open source community can open up the Ouya (literally and figuratively) and perform any modification or create a new game, taking advantage of the console’s Android OS (modified Jellybean 4.1). The organization will allow people to root the console and they are even offering a pre-rooted version sold, to those who are worthy, for $1,337 (tongue in cheek, I see). All games include some sort of free-to-play feature on top of the 1080p Nvidia ULP GeForce HDMI graphics, Nvidia Tegra 3 SoC and 1.7 GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor.

However, the new gaming company wants to give you, the user, another opportunity to personalize your gaming. Ouya has teamed up with Makerbot, desktop 3D printing leaders, to let you design your own case for this revolutionary game console.

The printing kit, including .stl and .3dm files, offers customizable templates designed to optimize printing cases for the Ouya using the newer Makerbot 3D printers, however, templates are modifiable using other 3D design programs.

The printed parts include the case, a lid and the cover for the spring loaded on/off button, all created with the Makerbot Replicator 2 or 2X Experimental printers. They can be printed with different colors of biodegradable Polylactic Acid or ABS filaments and the necessary files can be downloaded from Makerbot’s thingiverse.com. To clarify, this ‘case’ is literally the shell that holds in all the electrical goodies, or as Makerbot put it, literally a game changer.

Early Kickstarter supporters got Ouyas for only $95 and they will receive the console in the next couple days. The rest of us will have to pay just five dollars more. Look for community created cases and games when the console is released to the public in June 2013.

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