Doubtful. I think this will be a niche console for geeks, because of one reason: Content.
It's a vicious cycle. With no content, customers won't want it, and with no customers, content creators won't create any games or apps for it.
Still, it looks very promising, I'm just unsure if developers will get content onto this thing.
The mobile appstores are so saturated that it's impossible to get noticed, at least at the start that will make Ouya attractive to developers even if it has a smaller customer base.
Don't get me wrong, I would buy one of these anyway, but I just hope to see some developers hop onto it, which seems unlikely at this point.
IIRC the controller has a touchpad (not a touchscreen) in the middle, but I have no idea what anyone's going to do with it.
Discovery will play a massive part in the success of games, and therefore of the whole platform.
Its already on Android. The port would not be hard to do (if any).
This platform will grow like crazy, because the tools are open source, and Android is a very strong brand.
They've been working on it, but it still doesn't compare well to the PC version, or even the Xbox release. People are willing to accept a bit of a gimped version of their phone, because it's running on their phone. On a console (even one that costs less than a phone did) I think they'll have some trouble overcoming that.
It could happen, but a proper version of Minecraft for Ouya would take some effort. If they get enough adoption for Mojang to bother, that could be the tipping point that pushes it to popularity.
While there's a lot of Minecraft that's certainly CPU-bound, rendering at higher resolutions has next to nothing to do with CPU speed. The bulk of your rendering work is done by the GPU, and the GPU in Ouya is more than capable of rendering Minecraft at HD resolutions.
"Grow like crazy" seems a little optimistic. Android has grown in large part because it dominates carrier showrooms, where most "normal" people buy their phones. I also wouldn't call it a strong brand, and you may have noticed that "Android" is mentioned much less in advertising, with companies now advertising their brands (e.g., Samsung Galaxy) more often than not.
The OUYA is also under-powered - a Tegra 3 is already old tech. Mobile tech, which the OUYA is built on, is growing much too quickly for this thing to gain much traction.
I'm rooting for it but you're right about the main challenges. Let's hope they can solve them.
(if anyone wants to try it, there's a demo at that website!)