14 DAY TRIAL // Although it has been speculated since June that Razer might have bought Ouya, it took the company a month to officially acknowledge the acquisition. Apparently, Ouya is now officially a part of Razer.
Razer took a while to officially announce the acquisition to settle things out in what outcome this deal will have. Razer decided not to acquire the hardware part of Ouya’s business, specifically the microconsole and controller that helped make Razer’s name in the first place.
Ouya began in 2013 as a Kickstarted company after it managed to raise $8.5 million on the crowdfunding website. It all went to a halt because of lack of developers willing to create games for the platforms and gamers to actually buy a kit. It seems kickstarting a company doesn't make it successful after all.
Although the company seems to be still selling its gaming kits right now, for a month Mesa Global has been listing the company as being bought by Razer.
A nice dream killed by lack of interest
The deal meant taking some key people at Ouya and integrating them at Razer, however, without Ouya CEO and co-founder Julie Uhrman who declined being part of the deal. But more than that, it'll be the company's catalogue of games that will be directly taken by Razer and integrated with Razer's Cortex, renaming it "Cortex for Android TV."
While it will stop manufacturing any sort of hardware, Ouya brand will remain as an Android TV games publisher owned by Razer. In order to make the complete transition from Ouya to Razer a smooth experience the 200,000 Ouya console owners will still have one year of hardware support. Afterwards, special deals and discounts will probably convince the Ouya owners to switch to Razer's own Forge TV console.
Razer manages to keep the pace with the two big console market players like Sony and Microsoft by maintaining its Forge TV Android TV console afloat and in good sales numbers, while also using its performance-PC-oriented brand by building Blade gaming-optimized laptops, peripherals like controllers and keyboards, and wearables.