Razer on Monday confirmed its acquisition of Android game company Ouya, according to a press release on Razer's website. The financial details of the transaction, which was completed on June 12, were not disclosed. NDTV Gadgets had reported on the deal in June, and as we noted, Razer plans to migrate Ouya users to its Forge TV micro-console.
Razer will be focusing on the software part of the business, not the Ouya hardware at all. Ouya CEO and co-founder Julie Uhrman will not move to Razer either, she confirmed to TechCrunch.
The Forge TV micro-console was showcased at CES 2015, and aside from playing Android games on your television screen, the micro-console will also use Razer's upcoming Cortex technology to stream PC games to your TV.
This puts it in competition with the Nvidia Shield Android TV Console. Nvidia touts 50+ Shield-optimised Android titles at launch. Furthermore, it will work in sync with Nvidia Grid - the company's cloud streaming service which will let you stream games at 1080p, 60fps if you have a 50Mbps connection.
Grid will come in two subscriptions - basic that outputs at 720p and premium that lets you go up to 1080p. The subscription comes with a library of games, but you then purchase the top-tier AAA titles. Interestingly though, Nvidia promises AAA game releases at the same time as consoles and PC, but you'll be able to play them within a minute on Shield via Grid.
Ouya in August last year had partnered with Xiaomi to offer the games it developed in-house on the Mi Box set-top box and embedded in the Mi TV. The company had also opened the platform out to developers, with a 5 percent revenue sharing model. Ouya also received $10 million in funding from Alibaba in January this year.
"Razer has a long-term vision for Android TV and Android-based TV consoles, such as the Xiaomi Mi Box and Alibaba Tmall Box, to which Ouya already publishes," says Razer Co-Founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan. "Ouya's work with game developers, both triple A and indies, went a long way in bringing Android games to the living room and Razer intends to further that work. This acquisition is envisaged to usher more developers and content to the Android TV platform."
Razer's focus will be Ouya's software business, and it will not keep Ouya's hardware. It plans to publish Android TV content and Android-based TV console games under the Ouya name, but will relaunch the Ouya Store as Cortex for Android TV. The company will keep the Ouya service running for one more year, before closing it down.
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