Ouya launched an Android-powered video game console a few years ago and hasn’t really updated the hardware since. But the company has put a lot of time and money into building out its game store and software ecosystem which is used on a handful of third-party devices.
Still, the company wasn’t in great financial shape, and in June we reported that gaming accessory maker Razer had acquired Ouya.
At the time neither company had acknowledged the deal… but now they have.
Former Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman has confirmed that Razer has taken over Ouya… and that she’s left the company.
TechCrunch has more details about the arrangement.
In a nutshell, Razer seems to have acquired Ouya for its software rather than its hardware. That makes sense, since Razer launched its own Android TV box earlier this year. It’s called the Razer Forge TV and while the hardware seems pretty good on paper, the box has gotten less-than-stellar reviews so far.
Ouya, meanwhile, has developed an online game store with over a thousand titles optimized to TVs, and which reportedly has millions of users.
Razer is said to be planning on incorporating that store with its Razer Forge software, although the company will also continue to support customers who own Ouya TV hardware for at least a year.
You can still buy an Ouya for $100. But it features dated hardware at this point, and you’d probably be better off paying for a newer device like a Razer Forge TV or NVIDIA Shield console.
Still, it’s interesting to see that one of the early players in the Android-games-for-TV space will live on… sort of.
Ouya stopped making the Ouya HW a year ago. You cannot buy the Ouy HW for $99 unless its dregs sold by a third party. Ouya US has it as out of stock and has been for a very long time.
I wouldn’t state that the Ouya hasn’t been updated as it has been 28 times. Someof them have been small updates sure, but it definitely has been updated:https://ouyafw.skumler.net/
I was referring to the hardware, but I guess I could have made that more clear. I’ll add a word or two in that sentence.