In the interests of disclosure: I've downgraded my OUYA pledge for unrelated reasons

Not being a journalist, this is not actually required of me but since I’ve been sticking up for the OUYA project against what I feel is some undeserved and hypocritical cynicism, I feel it’s important to be honest about this.

I’ve downgraded from the $95 OUYA Kickstarter tier to the $10 tier that just allows me to reserve a name on their service as opposed to a hardware pre-order.

The reason for this is simple: That money was needed elsewhere. The CPU cooling system on my PC has been acting up lately and as I run my system overclocked, I needed to spend a good chunk of change on a better replacement solution for that. I’m also faced with the prospect of having to buy a new sound card soon due to the horrible, non-existent customer service I’m receiving from my current failing card’s manufacturer (more on that in another post). As my PC is currently my primary gaming platform, I want to make sure it’s running the best way possible and I wasn’t able to financially justify both that and my OUYA pledge in the same month.

I won’t lie, some of the coverage and the continuing non-answers from OUYA’s creators are causing me to raise some doubting eyebrows but rest assured, had this situation with my PC not arisen, I’d have kept my pledge where it was. I still think OUYA’s a great idea and has the potential to do great things and since I’m fully aware of the risks of support any Kickstarter project, I felt it was worth the risk. I’m certain there are at least a couple of projects out of the 22 I’ve backed that are either not going to make it to completion or be awful when they ship but them’s the breaks. Don’t play the Kickstarter game if you expect to win every time. I think OUYA is a worthwhile to back if it interests you but if it doesn’t grab you or you aren’t certain about what they’re showing, I totally get that too.

Some people will probably think this is a thinly-veiled excuse for me to slink away from the project because I’ve lost confidence in it. If you think that, I’m not going to waste my time convincing you otherwise. I know the truth and that’s all that matters. I might get lucky and pick up some extra freelance computer service work this month and if I do, I’ll be putting my money back in. If not, I look forward to picking one of these up at launch.