Last week, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund the development of a new inexpensive, Android-based gaming console called the GameStick. The campaign has been wildly successful so far as the $100,000 goal was reached in about 30 hours.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because you may be confusing it with the Ouya, another Android-based console which had a widely publicized launch and Kickstarter fundraising drive of its own in July 2012. It also quickly achieved its fundraising goal (in less than eight hours) and received $8.6 million in pledges.

The problem with both of these consoles is that I don’t see who they’re targeting with these new consoles. The promises of low-price consoles sounds like they’re trying to target gamers who have limited disposable income. However, being on the Android mobile operating system is indicative of targeting the casual gamer who is happy to play Angry Birds or Words with Friends on their phone or tablet.

When looking through OUYA’s website, the perks they pitch to potential customers is that it’s a cheap, but powerful, console that can play games in HD on your TV. There doesn’t seem to be much to the pitch except that you can put Android games and apps on your TV in HD. Okay, OUYA says all games will have some form of free-to-play, be it free with microtransactions or free trials with payment for the full version.

While OUYA talks about the console being able to play everything from mobile apps to AAA games, we haven’t seen any Triple-A games or any big names step up to produce something for the OUYA (unless Final Fantasy III which was ported to Android last year and would have been available anyway counts). OUYA talks about how it’s great for developers but none of the big ones have made a move to bring a game to OUYA.

The GameStick has ambitions for using its low price point as a means to bring gaming to the masses. At least, that’s what the Kickstarter pitch implies by talking about how few TV have consoles hooked up to them and promoting the portability of the stick. While the price of a GameStick console is less than the OUYA ($79 versus the OUYA’s $99), there is no guarantee that every game will have a free-to-play component.

Like OUYA, the people behind the GameStick talk about how big developers are interested in putting games on the GameStick but no games have been confirmed yet. Using the Android operating system, the GameStick will likely be able to use play games and apps already available for Android.

What we have here are two low-priced consoles with roughly the same backbone in terms of software and hardware that have a lot of ambition but little in concrete direction. While OUYA talks a bigger game about being an alternative for gamers to the big three console developers, they don’t have anything beyond a price point to appeal to traditional console gamers. The GameStick sounds like it’s aiming for the non-gamer market but I’ve only read about it and the OUYA on game and tech blogs. The media at large either don’t know or don’t care about these two consoles.

Maybe I’m wrong about suggesting that OUYA and the GameStick aren’t sure who they’re building these consoles for. Their sales pitches imply the target markets. The problem is that they just aren’t going to reach them at launch. So who will buy the OUYA? Probably people who want to play Android games but don’t have Android phones. Basically, BlackBerry and Windows Phone users who feel left out.