Gaming hardware company Razer is reportedly planning to buy the Android console maker Ouya after the latter did not gain much momentum to stay afloat in the video gaming console industry. Ouya, which became a successful project on Kickstarter, is now "basically dead" and up for grabs with Razer currently negotiating the sale of the microconsole maker.
According to Venturebeat, Razer is set to buy Ouya for about $10 million. The sale was apparently triggered by the debt hold as the company plans to buy out the debt holders, and this is indicative that Ouya is indeed for sale.
Venturebeat reports that the company has extended its full support to Ouya but it did not confirm or deny the speculations of buying Ouya, despite Razer's soon-to-be-launched Forge microconsole.
"Razer has always been supportive of Ouya, in particular, their work toward building an open platform for Android gaming in the living room and the empowerment of developers, especially indie developers, all over the world," Razer's spokesperson said as quoted from Venturebeat.
He added, "However, we do not comment on speculation or rumors and will reach out if and when we have substantive information to share." Just like Razer, the Android console maker Ouya is tight-lipped on the speculations.
Motivated by Ouya's ingenuity, Razer finds Ouya's platform attractive because to date it has 1,124 Android games including various exclusives. Aside from that, Ouya's platform has been widely used by more than 40,000 developers. If Razer will be able to acquire Ouya's platform, it will consequently boost its market share and give it significant lead against its rival consoles makers, Amazon's Fire and Nvidia's microconsole shield set-top box.
Ouya, the company founded by Julie Uhrman, fell short of its goal to become a software platform for Android and brining a unique gaming experience by having a console that is designed for TVs and set-top boxes. When the company launched its consoles in 2013 and creatively branded it as "The People's Console" it did not generate much hype as expected, Forbes reported.
