We’ve heard rumors, and then confirmations, but now we get it straight from the horse’s mouth – gaming outfit Razer has acquired parts and elements of the business of OUYA, that little micro-console that broke Kickstarter when it launched. As you can see from the announcement, it is not a full acquisition – Razer will not be acquiring OUYA’s hardware, specifically the console and the controller that made OUYA famous in the first place.
The terms of the acquisition – meaning, the full details of the financial part of it – have not been disclosed in Razer’s official announcement, but Min-Liang Tan, Razer’s CEO has gone on record saying “It was an all-cash deal.” This most likely means that all of OUYA’s investors may have cashed out. Also, we now know that former OUYA CEO and co-founder Julie Uhrman will not be working with Razer on as a result of this acquisition. Uhrman has vocally supported the transition, though.
You will remember the excitement and the hype when OUYA blew up in Kickstarter, collecting over USD$8.5 million in its crowdfunding campaign. That is still a record of sorts today in crowdfunded projects – but OUYA has struggled to gain traction in getting gamers to buy the console itself.
In this acquisition, Razer is bringing over OUYA’s technical and developer relations team to its fold, and renaming OUYA’s app store as Cortex for Forge TV. It also plans to migrate the OUYA user population, around 200,000 or so of them, to Razer’s Android TV gaming ecosystem. And as for OUYA’s hardware, well, what’s to happen to it now?
SOURCE: Razer
