Razer in talks to buy Ouya

[vcoleiro1]

Razer in talks to buy Ouya

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/10/ouya-sale-razer-report/

 

[thatgui]

Why, oh why is this still in the talks ? All Ouya ever had to offer was cheap hardware, nothing else about it was noteworthy at any point in time. Just let that thing die..

 

[ekianjo]

lol ouya is still a thing really?

 

[vcoleiro1]

Its basically a fire sale, other stories are saying the deal is reportedly for around $10M which is to clear debt holders

It's been happening for a while now, I have been following the Ouya forum for a long time.  Basically they stopped making the Ouya console towards the end of last year.  Recently they stopped selling everything ie including game credit .  One of the founders had written a story about how they came close last year to not being able to pay salaries. They had gotten cash from a company called Triplepoint which stipulated a debt covenant, which they triggered recently. The EOI type sale has been happening from April. Sad, because I really liked it.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/10/razer-is-in-talks-to-acquire-android-microconsole-maker-ouya/

 

[Nintendo]

I wouldn't even buy them for a dollar.

Spoiler

 

[Exophase]

Guess that's it for OUYA then. If Razer buys them it's just going to be in an attempt to port the OUYA store to their own micro console, and that only has any chance of happening if they can painlessly gain high compatibility this way. I can see why they'd go for this because they need all the help they can get. Either way, that's going to be the end for new OUYAs and new OUYA apps.

But I don't know what these numerous exclusives are supposed to be. There were some that had a limited exclusivity period but now? Some of them haven't come out yet (like That Dragon Cancer) so will probably not even get the opportunity anymore.

 

[SNESFAN]

I gave up all hope for them when I asked for assistance in getting their store/apps to work on 3rd party hardware. If they didn't plan to make their money on hardware sales, but rather through app purchases and profit sharing, then you would think this would have been a slightly higher priority from a business standpoint. At the very least, supporting a developer who didn't own their 1st party hardware bring their applications to their platform to increase potential sales.

The response they gave me was something along the lines of, "we need to focus on improving the experience on 1st party hardware before we think about 3rd party" Yet all they had to do was make the app they designed to specifically work on 3rd party hardware for developers to test games they had written to not just force close when you open it. The literal gateway application into their entire ecosystem just pain wouldn't open anymore after an update they made to it, it was so unpopular that nobody could pinpoint the exact version in which it quit working, they didn't publicly archive those updates either, nor would they provide them on request, so the updates themselves couldn't be tested to figure out which version introduced the failure. Yet they continued to provide this application along with documentation on how to get it to work and yet it didn't on any hardware. No documentation on how the application worked, no source code for it to fix it myself (not the store app, but the app that hooks into and displays the online store)

After about 6 months/year of waiting and even seeing updates to that application, of which still didn't work, I just gave up.

 

[Nintendo]

Dear Ouya...


R.I.P.(Rest in Pieces)

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I have one and it is a piece of junk.  Can't even type anything properly.  I'm glad it dies.  But I give my condolences to Razer for buying this piece of crap.

 

[TrashyMG]

I've had little respect for Razer for their overrated computer hardware that doesn't work well, let alone Ouya. They just consolidated two things I didn't like together. 

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Didn't they raise extra capital after the kickstarter via a holding company or business venture capitalists or something. I figure those guys lost out or else the sale of ouya to razer will cover their losses.

Ouya, a lesson in hyperbole. I guess Julie what's her name will just quietly slip away now and find a new job...

 

[Nintendo]

She can go work for Nintendo now.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

That game company... That ouya company...


If I was going to pay 10 million for a duck, I would at least expect it to be alive...

 

[Nintendo]

It just goes to show that Kickstarter doesn't work every single time no matter how much money is pledged.

 

[ekianjo]

If I was going to pay 10 million for a duck, I would at least expect it to be alive...

Honestly 10 millions USD is nothing nowadays. You can't make a business in hardware with such small funding (at least not at the size they thought they would grow). 

I can't imagine it would have ended any other way. 

What always made me laugh whenever they were talking about Ouya is how many employees they had already. If you start small, you can't start having 10 people or more working for you at full paid wages. That's a huge amount of money that becomes an ongoing cost. You should only hire more when 1) you have clear perspectives for growth 2) you already generate healthy benefits 3) you already have cash to sit on. 

 

[Exophase]

What always made me laugh whenever they were talking about Ouya is how many employees they had already. If you start small, you can't start having 10 people or more working for you at full paid wages. That's a huge amount of money that becomes an ongoing cost. You should only hire more when 1) you have clear perspectives for growth 2) you already generate healthy benefits 3) you already have cash to sit on.

Yeah they were way, way too large. They started with 25 employees, then by 2014 they had 49:

http://insights.dice.com/2014/03/03/ouya-expanding-beyond-televisions/

And only 19 were engineers, which is a terrible ratio for a company like this. And despite being grossly overstaffed they still claim they couldn't meet hardware demand, which I find very hard to believe.

This article also shows that they were basically considering selling forever ago, or at least partnering with another set-top or TV maker.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Well ed should be alright then ad he's only got the one employee...


Seriously though Pyra has realistic expectations, ouya never did.

 

[ekianjo]

And only 19 were engineers, which is a terrible ratio for a company like this

I wonder what 19 engineers were doing full time. Like, playing Solitaire or something? It's not like they produced much...  

 

[ekianjo]

basically considering selling forever ago

The woman at the top of Ouya never struck me as someone who was passioned about games but rather passioned about making as much money as she could. That's fine if that's what makes her enjoy life, but that's not something we usually see in the gaming world: rather people who like games in the first place and who make money from it as a side effect. (except in the mobile gaming world where the thinking is how to extort as much money as possible from the get-go).

 

[Nintendo]

We need more people like Reggie Fils-Aimé.