On Monday there was a confirmation from the company’s official website that Razer bought Ouya. The press release on the Razer website confirms that acquisition of the Android gaming company called Ouya but there were no financial details regarding the transaction available in the post. The transaction was completed on June 12 and Razer’s plans are to move the users of the Ouya gaming console onto its own Forge TV console.
Razer will focus on just the software part from Ouya and not the hardware at all. Julie Uhrman, the co-founder and CEO of Ouya has also confirmed that she will not be moving to Razer either. Razer’s Forge TV console was shown at the CES 2015. The micro-console is capable of letting you play Android games on your TV set and will also use the Cortex technology developed by Razer to stream the games on your PC to the TV.
This means that the console will be competing against the Shield Android TV Console from Nvidia. Nvidia claims it will have over 50 Android titles optimized for its Shield console when it launches. On top of this, the Shield will also be able to work with the Nvidia Grid, which is a cloud streaming service developed by the company that will allow users to stream their games at 60 frames per second, 1080p, with the help of a 50MB connection.
Grid will have two subscription plans. The basic one will output the video at 720p and the premium one will be able to stream the games at 1080p. The subscriptions come with some games but you will still have to purchase AAA titles on your own. What’s interesting is that Nvidia has promised that AAA titles will be released at the same time with PCs and other consoles. Gamers will be able to play those games on the Shield with the help of Grid.
Last year in August, Ouya partnered up with Xiaomi in order to offer their first-party games on the Mi Box and integrated inside the Mi TV. Ouya had also opened up its platform to third-party developers. The company also received a funding of $10 million in January from Alibaba.
However, Razer will focus on just the software part of the Ouya and will ditch the hardware completely. The gaming company plans to publish content from Android TV and games based on the operating system under the name Ouya. However, Razer will rename the Ouya Store as its own Cortex store for Android TV. The Ouya service will still be kept up by the company for a year but Razer will shut it down after that time passes.
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