Gaming startup Ouya, which raised more than $8 million last June via Kickstarter, announced it will release its $99 game console to retailers on June 4. The affordable Android-based box could encourage innovation and disrupt the TV gaming market, by allowing developers to create inexpensive games. Wired had a chance to play with the new device at design firm fuseproject, where Yves Behar created the metal cube that houses Ouya.

Ouya was made available to its “earliest backers” starting last week. CEO Julie Uhrman says the early owners will be able to “watch the UI evolve to where it will be by June 4.”

“As of right now, it’s just fun to hold an Ouya,” reports Wired. “One doesn’t expect a game console to come in such a tiny form factor. It’s deliberately underpowered, of course, but as of now that just seems to be leading developers to create pretty 2D imagery or use simpler polygonal models, instead of trying to force the hardware to render things it wasn’t built for.”

“The interface is simple, just a menu of four words: Play, Discover, Make and Manage,” explains the article. “The latter lets you adjust the system settings; the first is a list of the games you own. It’s in the middle two options where things get interesting.”

In a related post, Digital Trends notes that Ouya “is powered by the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor that you’d find on a smartphone. Like the Google Play app store, Ouya’s growing library of games (104 titles as of today) is only accessible from its built-in store, so you don’t need to pop in a disk if you want to game — the console doesn’t have an optical drive, anyway.”

Rather than relying upon downloads or revenue to gauge success, Ouya is developing its own automatic algorithm based on player behavior to determine whether or not a game is good.

“How many times have they played it? For how long are they playing it? When a player turns on their Ouya, is it the first game they immediately boot up? All of these factors will influence how prominently games are positioned in the Ouya marketplace when a player clicks on ‘Discover,'” explains Wired.

Another element that makes Ouya unique is that there is no difference between the developer kit and a retail console. Anyone with an Ouya and PC can create games. Developers will also be free to experiment with different methods of monetization.

“It’s true that the gaming landscape is shifting tectonically, and it seems like the ground is falling out from underneath the traditional, established models of the super-expensive console and $60 games,” notes Wired. “But just because Ouya’s philosophy seems sound doesn’t mean that this particular device will succeed. Either way, we can certainly see Nintendo and Sony reacting to the new landscape with their presentations and booths at Game Developers Conference this week. Nintendo, in lieu of showing off its own new games, is demonstrating how small developers can create inexpensive games on Wii U by using HTML5 and Javascript.”