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Crowdfunded Android Console Ouya Reportedly Seeking Buyout
An anonymous reader writes: Ouya, the Android-based games console, enjoyed one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns to date, raising $8.6 million after asking for only $960,000. But now that the console has been on the market for a while, the company is struggling. After borrowing roughly $25 million from investors to keep it going, they're now trying to restructure the debt, and reportedly seeking a buyout. "Interest in Ouya's microconsole has dropped considerably since its launch back in 2013, where it had to offer store credit to dissatisfied Kickstarter backers for failing to deliver devices on time. Following disappointing sales figures for early games, the company has tried several times to turn its fortunes around."
Ouya has loads of competition now from ARM "sticks" and media adapters like the Fire, Roku or Cu Box. And each year brings more capable hardware while Ouja stays the same. The new raspberry pi 2 or Amazon Fire are arguably superior in all ways. Certainly both those alternatives make excellent XBMC/Kodi boxes.
And competition has also come from tablets in terms of casual gaming. Tablets benefit from huge economies of scale and large online market ecosystems. Ouja was always going to be a niche market appealing to techies and gamers.
They started to backpedal on promises before the end of the crowdfunding, it is overpriced for what it was, and they had severe quality issues. 4 controllers with very little use in 1 year... Xbox controllers abused to hell work fine 4 years later. Yeah, it's dead, nobody cares, they cant even sell them in the clearance bin at Target.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Would the console makers be as open to indies as they are today if OUYA had never shipped?
They were reasonably open to indies BEFORE Ouya shipped, though they are more so today.
This provision caused problems for Robert Pelloni's company when he wanted to bring Bob's Game to Nintendo DS because the company was operating out of an office in Pelloni's home.
Bob Pelloni's company was just HIM. Aint no way Nintendo was going to give him a license or dev kit when he was basically every stereotype of a "wanna be game developer with SERIOUS Aspergers" His disability was just that severe. Now you may feel a kinship with him because of that disability, but don't. Really...don't. He's no role model for you, and you should go out of your way to be NOTHING like him in any way.
That 100 day lock-in of his? It's NOT the sort of thing done by an adult with a job who wants to be taken seriously. Bob Pellonishould be living in a supervised group home....that's how disabled he is.