Today Razer has announced that their purchase of the Android micro-console maker Ouya is complete. The ‘all-cash’ purchase of the Ouya company also marks the end of the console, with Razer having no plans to manufacture future iterations of Ouya or Ouya-related hardware. In other words, Ouya will be turning off the lights soon for good.
With that said, Razer is giving users 12 months to figure out what they want to do, encouraging them to join Razer’s gaming services. What plans the company does have include Razer utilizing Ouya’s software assets to build out “Corrtex for Android TV”, Razer Forge TV, as well as other possible future products. This also means the migration of users from Ouya to Razer’s gaming services will require users to make new hardware purchases, although Razer plans to do a lot of giveaways and such to help out.
There are about 200,000 users on the OUYA platform and for the hardware users, we intend to, out of goodwill (as we didn’t acquire the hardware assets), keep the lights on for their gaming service for at least 12 months as we encourage them to migrate to the Razer service which will have a lot more features, new content and new games. – Founder and CEO of Razer Min-Liang Tan
So it appears the deal was for the Ouya software and nothing more, judging from the above statement. After the 12 months are over, the Ouya hardware will be just a box on your desk. Unless of course you’ve rooted it or done something cool with it to make it still useful. Another part of the deal not going to Razer is Ouya CEO and co-founder Julie Uhrman. Razer will be integrating Ouya’s games, controllers and accounts to its Cortex TV gaming platform. The company will relaunch Ouya’s store as Cortex for Android TV. Ouya’s developer relations team will be working with Razer now to continue to grow business.
As for the Ouya brand itself, Razer will actually be keeping it alive. The company will be using the Ouya name as a standalone game publisher for Android TV and Android based TV consoles. So really the only thing that will be truly ending is the physical console itself, everything else will be integrated in some fashion with Razer.
Website Referenced: Techcrunch
