So long, Ouya! Razer acquires microconsole’s storefront, technical team

Welcome to the family, @playouya. pic.twitter.com/QBkUjd4C53

— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) July 27, 2015

The Ouya Android microconsole went out not with a bang but with a bazillion tweets. Monday morning saw Ouya’s founder, Julie Uhrman, direct Twitter posts at a number of people who had worked on or developed for the Ouya, along with one vague nod to the gaming-hardware folks at Razer.

Shortly afterward, the companies announced an acquisition deal, which had already been signed on June 12, that made no bones about it: Ouya’s software, storefront, and technical staff were being swallowed up by Razer, while the original hardware was now discontinued. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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.

At the very least, according to the announcement, Ouya’s Bluetooth controllers will be compatible with Forge, and Ouya accounts full of games will transfer to Razer’s own upcoming gaming storefront. Instead of launching an Ouya-branded online games shop, however, Razer is opting to relaunch its Cortex “game launcher” software with an Ouya-powered games shop in it. Razer’s press release also hinted to Ouya-branded content launching on AndroidTV devices, but it didn’t clarify how or why Razer will operate two separately branded storefronts with similar content.

The announcement follows a wave of bad Ouya news, which peaked in April thanks to leaked news about rising debts and Ouya’s growing desperation to sell. That news came only three months after the company received a $10 million infusion of cash from Alibaba, relating to that company’s efforts to build and deliver its own Android-based living room boxes to Chinese customers.

When interviewed by Ars Technica last week, Ouya board member and Xbox creator Ed Fries hinted at the company’s next move. “The most valuable asset [Ouya] has right now isn’t the console or the controllers, it’s the content library,” Fries said. “A bunch of people want that content library for other things they’re doing.” He also praised the Ouya team for what it had accomplished up to this point, including its historic Kickstarter origins: “Ultimately, did it become a competitor for Xbox or PS4? Not really. We should be more realistic about what’s possible. For a small group of people with crowdfunded money, they did incredible.”