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Razer Acquires Ouya's Storefront and Technical Team
An anonymous reader writes: The Ouya Android-based gaming console was one of Kickstarter's biggest successes — and one of the biggest letdowns for all the backers. The console never really took off, and the company behind it has limped along over the past couple years. Until today. Razer has now acquired the Ouya technical team, as well as their online storefront — but not the console hardware itself. Razer intends to dump of all these new resources into its Forge TV product, also an Android game console. "Razer went so far as to kick a little sand in the face of the little-console-that-couldn't—by advertising its own Forge microconsole as a 'more advanced' system and telling Ouya owners that they will receive 'a clear path of migration' to buy the company's current $100, AndroidTV-compatible box." The fate of Ouya's hardware is not explicitly mentioned, but the news article suggests it is simply "discontinued."
Sorry, but Kung Fury was worth every single penny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's also better than anything that Hollywood has produced in the past 40 years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, with investments that promise cash returns, it's very easy to categorize the return. I can't speak for others, but when I've kickstarted a game or other project, I expect that what I'm getting is going to exceed the value of the money I'm putting in, even if that value is in the form of largely intangible enjoyment. Sometimes I'm wrong about that, and in at least one case spectacularly so (I played the beta for about ten minutes, and concluded that it was utter crap that I had zero further interest in), but that was my poor estimate.
And part of why it works is that there are people who (at least for some projects) who value the proposed project enough that they put forward the money ahead of time. Maybe some of them are foolishly overestimating the value, but that's how it goes sometimes. Sure, you can wait until it's actually produced, but then you're not one of those people who wants it enough to do so - and I certainly wouldn't argue that you should do anything but wait and see, in that case, because there is indeed risk that the project could fail and you'd be out that money with nothing to show for it.
I'd say it's more of an investment than anything, given all that - it's not a donation if you're expecting/hoping for something tangible in return that is at least commensurate in value, with a degree of risk that you might wind up with nothing at all. You're just investing in the possibility of getting a copy of a particular proposed game/console/etc, rather than getting a certain amount of monetary profit back.
I have funded 40+ kickstarts. One flaked out and cost me the whole $20, at least 6 had delays greater than 50% of the estimated delivery time. But more than half nailed it and I got what I purchased.
I backed the Ouya, and kept careful track of what they were up to. It was a good idea, it was well executed. It worked... But anyone who guarantees you a successful venture in the gaming console market is a liar. It's an unpredictable space. Just look at the money that Microsoft and Sony have had to dump into it to be stay successful (red-ring-of-death? blue-light-of-death? expensive). Look at the success of the Wii on technically inferior hardware (for the day).
What the Ouya people missed was the difficulty in porting many games designed around finger-swipes to use classic thumb controllers. The conversion rate of hit Android games over to the Ouya platform wasn't nearly what they hoped for.
The dream, a gaming console selling $5 games of "good Android quality" is a good dream. I've no regrets for backing it.