Roy Bahat appointed Ouya chairman

Ouya has appointed Roy Bahat as chairman of the company behind the crowdfunded hackable console, and hired Steve Chamberlin and Raffi Bagdasarian to fill key roles in software development.

This is the first news released by the company since the close of the Kickstarter campaign, which shattered records by raising $8.6 million.

A company spokesperson told Develop that since the close of the campaign "more than 1,000" game developers have reached out to the company, and over fifty distributers have inquired about bringing the console to international markets.

Ouya is filtering through these applications to determine partners.

UC Berkeley lecturer and former Rhodes scholar Roy Bahat served for five years as President of IGN entertainment and sat on several startup boards.

Chamberlin, an experienced game development director from Trion worlds, will serve as Ouya’s lead software engineer and oversee all software development.

Bagdasarian comes to the company from Sony Pictures Television’s Digital Networks Group, where he oversaw the publication of platforms like Xbox Live, PlayStation 3, Roku, iOS, and Android.

This experience will be invaluable to him as he drives product development for platform services and user experience.

The Ouya is slated for release in March 2013.