I’ll be honest here: my faith in OUYA has long since faded away.
Wind back 3 years and you’d get a completely different story; the idea of a console freed from publishers and big money marketers appealed to the guy who wanted to see the indie renaissance turn into a full blown revolution. I wasn’t alone in thinking this and many of the backers saw the OUYA as the key to unlocking a console market for indie devs that, back then, wasn’t really available. The late release to backers and dated hardware meant that it wasn’t much of a platform indie devs wanted to find themselves on which meant that users really couldn’t find much to love about the console either. Couple that with the fact that the major consoles are now extremely friendly to indie devs and the OUYA has lost the mission it was the champion of. The result of this is that OUYA has been struggling and now it’s looking for someone to rescue it.
Over its life OUYA has taken in some $23 million in both Kickstarter funds as well as venture capital making it quite a well funded startup comparatively. A quick search around will reveal a lot of vanity metrics, like the fact they’ve got over 1000 games and 40,000 developers signed up but no where will you find number of units shipped nor any solid figures on how many titles developers are able to move on the system. Indeed even those metrics they tout paint a pretty grim picture of the OUYA as only 1 in 40 developers signed up to the program have actually released a title on it, a mere 2.5%. Mix in the conversion rate of users actually on the console and it’s really no wonder that they’re looking for a buyer as the revenue on their sales, both hardware and software, can’t be good.
Thinking back on it though there’s really no one defining problem that I can point to that really soured OUYA, more it was death by a myriad of little problems that just compounded the impending irrelevance it was facing. Not getting the console into the hands of the enthusiasts, I.E. the backers who were genuinely excited to see the product come to life, long before anyone could get their hands on it meant that when it did finally release there was no Kickstarter fuelled fanfare to go with it. Taking as long as it did to release meant the hardware was long since surpassed and whilst it was sufficient at the time it quickly started to show its age. The quality of the console, whilst decent for the price point, wasn’t great and only helped to compound the idea that it was a gimmick and not much more. All of this, and more, has meant that the OUYA has just faded from the greater gaming community’s conscious and I don’t think it’s likely to return.
I won’t pretend to have a solution for their woes as I don’t. As far as I’m concerned the ship has long since sailed on the OUYA idea and now, with the major console players coming onboard with better support for indie developers, there really isn’t any room for them to play in. Today most people would much rather just play Android games on their Android phone and, should they want it, pairing it up with the controller of their choice. If OUYA manages to find a willing buyer I’d be very surprised as I can’t really see a future for OUYA that ends with them becoming a successful niche console.
