After a short and troubled lifespan, OUYA is reportedly seeking a buyer in the wake of massive debt. According to a memo from CEO Julie Uhrman leaked to Fortune, the company was unable to renegotiate repayment to investors like TriplePoint Capital, from which they seem to have secured funding of more than $10 million, and so the company is seeking buyers as soon as possible. In the memo, Uhrman writes: “Given our debtholder’s timeline, the process will be quick. We are looking for expressions of interest by the end of this month.”
OUYA, the Android-based unit pitched as an open source and developer-friendly unit, made a huge splash in late summer of 2012 when the Kickstarter campaign took off like a freight train, hitting funding goals in eight hours and becoming then then-fastest project to raise a million dollars in backer pledges. Before the campaign ended, more than 8.5 million had been raised for project development.
As a sidenote, I backed OUYA on Kickstarter and secured my username, but once the microsonsole was released, never felt need enough to justify even the low price point, a sentiment echoed by many who noted the sluggish controls, unwieldy UI, and worst of all, redundancy of the unit itself. Once retail rolled around, the console that seemed such a great idea just didn’t feel necessary, even with reports of improved performance, and just a couple years later, perhaps that feeling has done the system in. While a buyer may yet sweep in and save the system, such substantial debt after such a promising start makes that seem an unlikely scenario for an item not in heavy demand.
[via Gamasutra]
