OUYA, the game-console maker that has faltered since it made a big splash on Kickstarter in 2012, has received a new infusion of cash from an influential business partner.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba reportedly dropped $10 million into OUYA's coffers within the last month, according to The Wall Street Journal, an investment in trade for bringing OUYA's platform to Alibaba's set-top box. That's quite an investment considering OUYA's poor showing in the United States due to some growing pains early on. Many of those growing pains went away eventually, and OUYA made strides with a software platform known as "OUYA Everywhere." Xiaomi added OUYA everywhere to its set-top boxes last year, and now apparently Alibaba is looking to do something similar.
If that is the case, OUYA is playing things close to vest for now. CEO Julie Uhrman wouldn't confirm or deny the report, but she did say: "We have been working with partners to bring our platform and games library to their devices [OUYA Everywhere]. We're live with Madcatz in the U.S. and working with Xiaomi in China. There are a number of others in the works, with our focus outside the US because there is where we see the most opportunity and growth. Sometimes new markets leapfrog the established ones...this may be one of those cases."
"Being the largest independent library of Android games for the TV allows us to partner with anyone looking to bring creative content to the TV on boxes that can play games," Uhrman went on to state, leading one to believe that this (rumored) deal with Alibaba is indeed "one of those cases."
