

Razer Acquires Ouya’s Software, Tech and Dev Teams in All-Cash Deal  - winterismute
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/razer-confirms-ouya-acquisition/

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cwyers
More info is available at Polygon:

[http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/7/27/9046895/razer-
ouya...](http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/7/27/9046895/razer-ouya-android-
why)

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bphogan
The Techcrunch article linked in this article has a lot more details,
including statements that sound a lot like "your Ouya console will be useless
in 12 months - go get a Razer Forge box after that."

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genericuser
Why would one expect the usefulness of their Ouya console to change and be
anything other than useless? (this is a joke at Ouya's expense, I am pointing
it out because based on my past experience making jokes here someone will take
this seriously and get all defensive about how great Ouya is)

Seriously though in 12 months Ouya will be 3 years old, I don't think
expecting a company to actively support a piece of cheap (affordable for those
that find the word cheap insulting) hardware for more than 3 years is a
reasonable expectation. Ouya had already added the play store I thought (as
pointed out below, I thought wrong), and so discontinuing support will
probably amount to the Ouya store ceasing to exist and a lack of future
patches. I mean its a device to play games mainly in a local manner, it will
continue to be able to do that as well as it can now.

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bphogan
Isn't it interesting how 3 years is such a long time to support things now?

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Joeri
I just bought a washing machine with a ten year warranty, to replace one made
in the 80's for which there are still official spare parts (but that I felt
was better off being replaced than repaired). You can find companies who are
in it for the long haul, but it is true that most aren't.

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eropple
Washing machines don't have twice as much wash performance after five years,
though. Apples and soup cans.

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andyidsinga
With all the indie & low tech games around, I suspect console power doesn't
double the enjoyment/thrill factor every 3-5 years either.

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bananaoomarang
I actually think the Ouya was a very nice idea, and clearly so did a lot of
people who backed it. The execution was awful on so many levels, but there
will probably be room in the market for something like this once the console
market is done shifting => non-existent. I would guess it will be part of
something like the Apple TV box though.

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Scuds
What could have been done besides throwing more money at it?

How did Microsoft get the original xbox into a state of relevance?

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larrik
"How did Microsoft get the original xbox into a state of relevance?"

By dumping an insane amount of money into it, and waiting until the 360 to
actually make any profit whatsoever. Not easy to replicate.

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cwyers
I have no idea why people are downvoting this, as it's pretty accurate. If
anything it understates the difficulty. The original Xbox cost tons to
develop, and Microsoft spent a lot more money getting games for the thing. In
the process they created the canonical example of a console first-person
shooter, the genre that now dominates game sales. (You could argue that
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on the N64 got there first, but Halo is the one
that really moved the market to where it is now.) Then on top of that, they
created Xbox Live, which has had at least as much impact on how we play games
as Halo did. And you're absolutely right that they lost money in the process.
So yeah, dumping an insane amount of money into creating two products that
revolutionized the game industry and not recouping that investment until the
the second-generation product launched is how they did it.

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Falcon9
"Created" is a strong word for Microsoft's contribution to Halo, given the
original debut of the game at MacWorld:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2RMHeMGDDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2RMHeMGDDU)

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cwyers
If we're playing the pedant game, what I said was:

> In the process they created the canonical example of a console first-person
> shooter

Whatever one thinks about Microsoft's involvement in Halo, it wasn't going to
be a console game at all without them. And I don't think it's the game that
changes the whole industry if it's not the game that brought PC's biggest
genre to consoles in a way that made them feel like they belonged there.

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roflchoppa
Damn, i did not know Ouya was still relevant. I had assumed that the idea had
fallen down to obsolescence land. Jokes on me though, they just pulled in 10M.

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SeoxyS
After raising 33M from VCs, a 10M exit leaves everybody with nothing… Likely,
the investors got some cash for the IP, and the rest went into retention
bonuses.

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gorena
Well, everyone gets nothing except the people with the retention bonuses - the
employees.

So, money was funneled from rich VCs to workers? I'm... okay with this.

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swang
Article says VCs got their money back, which in all likelihood means employees
got nothing.

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gorena
In my experience with acquihires the employees usually end up with a pretty
nice package of RSUs, while the VCs take a huge loss. They don't make money on
the exit, but they do well.

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J_Darnley
Ha! Why would anyone buy one, or a sequel to it, now that it is made by the
company that required an internet connection to use their mouse?

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dang
Url changed from
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/249573/Ouya_buyout_confir...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/249573/Ouya_buyout_confirmed_as_CEO_leaves_company.php#.VbZLPu36O90.twitter),
which points to this.

