Gamers want a new video game console. That's the impression you get if you've been watching the explosion of activity on the Kickstarter page for OUYA, the hackable, Android-based game console that will retail for $99.

To date, the OUYA has raised $5 million dollars from nearly 40,000 Kickstarter investors, with more than 32,000 plunking down $99 or more to preorder a console. It promises to open up the console industry to independent game developers, and lower the barrier of entry for gamers. The community responded, and the OUYA broke its $950,000 funding goal in under 8 hours.

The console has lofty goals, but does warrant some deeper scrutiny. OUYA says it will deliver 80,000 units by March, 2013, only eight months after the launch date. Recently released data shows that only 25 percent of Kickstarter projects meet their delivery date, and that is compounded the more a project is overfunded.

OUYA has also not released many images of the console or its UI, and none of the controller — the image used prominently in the Kickstarter campaign is a rendering. The Ouya Kickstarter FAQ states that the developers have only "begun" work on the UI for the console.

Moreover, this isn't the first try at an open marketplace for independent games. Microsoft has an Indie Games channel for the Xbox 360 that has few barriers to entry for developers. The result is an uncurated channel where many of the top games are blatant Minecraft clones. Networks that have spent more time curating their content, such as Steam, have had a better time supporting independent games.

Mashable posed some of our biggest questions about OUYA to founder and CEO Julie Uhrman. We've posted her answers here, and ask our readers to interpret what they think of them in the comments.

Q&A With OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman

If you now plan to ship more than 80,000 OUYAs by March 2013, do you have plans to ramp up the production process? Do you think that you can ship in time if you sell all those?

We are confident that we will deliver: The hardware is straightforward. We aren’t building a rocketship here; these are commodity components, combined in an inventive way. We have a high degree of understanding of what it takes to make this product, and the cost at which we can do it. And it already works. We already have a functional prototype—in our Kickstarter video you see me playing Shadowgun on it.

And, of course, we’ve got Yves Behar and the team at fuseproject leading the charge on design. This is what he does. He designs great products for the marketplace. He would not have agreed to work on this if he thought we couldn’t pull it off. I doubt this is even the most challenging product he’s worked on. As I said, it’s not the hardware that’s revolutionary, it’s the business model, developer proposition and design that are innovative. Our team has delivered hardware products before — including Kindle, Jambox, and more. They know their stuff. We’ve crunched the numbers, examined the bill of materials, and vetted our plans with our advisors, including Amol Sarva, who took on a similar challenge when we developed the Peek email at a similarly low price.

We capped the number of consoles we will make available for March. (80,000 consoles at the $99 reward level on Kickstarter.) This is a number that we are confident in. And, what’s available is already almost half sold out.

We can do this. There may be hiccups along the way, but that’s true of any company that brings a product to market. And we expect that with all the attention we’ve received in our week on Kickstarter, that people will try to kick the tires a bit. Until we have a product on the market—that people can touch for themselves—we expect some skepticism.

There are plenty of folks that are ready to review OUYA now, using the same metrics as they would a final product on the store shelves, but that’s just not where we are, it’s unrealistic at this point to think that you can do a head-to-head comparison with other products when we haven’t yet put OUYA in anyone’s hands yet.

Those guys are going to have to wait and continue to speculate. Meanwhile we intend to focus on the task at hand: bringing a great product to market. We’ve got almost 40,000 people backing us on Kickstarter. Our first priority is to make them proud.

Assuming the Kickstarter tops out at about $6-8 million, how much more funding will you need to secure from outside sources to complete the project?

To be clear, we are not looking for additional funding. We can deliver on what we've promised in the Kickstarter with the funds we've secured.

Why have you been so secretive with the controller? If the controller concept is done, why not show it off to your loyal backers?

The mystery and intrigue can be credited to fuseproject and Yves Behar. They feel very strongly about protecting the integrity of the design until we can show a finished product. They are the pros here so we’ll follow their lead. Part of the value of Kickstarter is getting feedback while we still have the ability to respond to it.

A game console is only as good as its titles. What developers do you have confirmed, and can we talk to them? What are your plans for bringing exciting titles to the console?

We’ve only been a hot topic for a week but if we know there is one thing that people want it’s a game roster. But given that we won’t be on the market until 2013, it’s something we aren’t prepared to share just yet. We want our launch slate to feel fresh, and we feel it’s early to go out with everything now. (That said, Meteor, the maker of Hawken said they’re also coming to OUYA.)

We plan to work with a range of developers to bring content to OUYA. We may even consider some "first party" development where we help fund game creation. For many developers, our Kickstarter campaign was the first introduction to OUYA. It inspired a lot off game makers to contact us about developing for OUYA and we’re responding to them all—it’s just going to take some time.

The poor quality games available in the Xbox Live Indie Games Channel shows that there needs to be some moderation for game content, for quality and maturity levels. What safeguards do you plan to put in place to make sure good content is easy to find, and that bad content (sploits, malware, inappropriate material) doesn't overcrowd the store?

We'll curate the games we promote, to ensure that we help the best games find their audience. We have also received lots of feedback about different ways to do game discovery. We'll have to see what kinds of games we get to develop the best possible curation and promotion, but this is one of the biggest themes we are working on. It’s absolutely a priority.

If current Android games require a gyroscope and gestures to play, how do you plan to roll them into the market?

We don’t plan to have an accelerometer in our controller, so games that require one would have to be adapted.

We are probably most excited about our controller. It has everything gamers expect: fast buttons, triggers, laser-precise analog sticks, a D-Pad – plus a touchpad. We expect that developers will design a whole new type of gameplay around it.

If the console is hackable, then what is to stop users from pirating games developers made for the OUYA? All paid content on OUYA will require authentication with our server (to pay for the content). One of the advantages of the free-to-play model is how well it addresses piracy. And if users root the console, it won't give them any additional access to the games on it.

Will you be releasing more concrete details to your backers before the campaign ends?

Yep.

If there are delays in manufacturing and shipping, do you have a contingency for your backers?

We are working to deliver just as we promised. We are confident in our plans, we’ve got the right team in place, a slew of experts ready to help us get to where we need to go, and it’s completely doable.

OUYA backers or potential backers, what do you think of the console? Are you sated with Uhrman's response? Let us know in the comments.