Ouya

The $99 console Kickstarter wanted to exist

Shut down
19902026

Ouya was a $99 Android games console funded by a record-setting 2012 Kickstarter that raised $8.6 million. It shipped in June 2013 to poor reviews, faded within a year, was bought by Razer in 2015 and finally switched off on 25 June 2019, taking players' purchased games with it.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2012
  2. 10 July 2012 Funding
    Kickstarter raises $8.6 million

    63,000 backers make it one of the biggest campaigns ever.

  3. 2013
  4. 25 June 2013 Launch
    Ouya ships at retail

    Weak hardware and a thin library meet high expectations.

  5. 2014
  6. 2014 Decline
    Sales collapse

    The promised second generation never arrives.

  7. 2015
  8. 27 July 2015 Acquisition
    Razer buys the software assets

    The store survives for existing owners.

  9. 2019
  10. 22 May 2019 Shutdown announced
    Razer announces the end

    One month's notice for the whole platform.

  11. 25 June 2019 Shutdown
    Ouya servers shut down

    Purchased games stop working, six years to the day after launch.

The site through time

Browse ouya.tv as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Ouya Inc. 2013–2015 Founded, $8.6M crowdfunded
Razer 2015–2019 Acquisition, software assets, undisclosed Shut all services in 2019

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Razer, which acquired Ouya's software assets in 2015, shut down all Ouya services on 25 June 2019, disabling purchased games.

Our analysis: Ouya raised $8.6 million on the promise of an open, cheap console, then shipped underpowered hardware with a thin library of games that mostly played better on the phone already in your pocket. Crowdfunding proved the appetite; it could not manufacture a platform.

History [edit]

Everyone wanted it to work

Julie Uhrman's pitch in July 2012 hit a nerve: a $99 console running Android, hackable by design, where every game had to offer a free trial, aimed squarely at the closed, expensive world of Xbox and PlayStation. It raised $8.6 million from 63,000 backers, briefly the biggest Kickstarter ever, and became a symbol of what crowdfunding might do to entrenched industries.

The reality shipped on 25 June 2013 and disappointed almost everyone. The hardware was weak even by 2013 tablet standards, the controller was mushy, the store was thin, and the games that were there mostly ran better on phones. Backers who had waited a year got a machine that felt like a prototype.

Sold, then switched off

Sales collapsed, a planned second generation never came, and in July 2015 Razer bought the software assets, keeping the store alive for existing owners and folding the team into its own Forge TV effort. That lasted four years. On 22 May 2019 Razer announced the end, and on 25 June 2019, exactly six years after launch, Ouya's servers went dark: purchased games could no longer be authenticated, and the consoles became bricks unless owners had already sideloaded their libraries. Preservationists archived what they could in the final month.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Crowdfunded gaming console Ouya will shut down for good on June 25th Engadget 22 May 2019 [archived]
  2. Razer shutting down Ouya, Forge TV, MOJO services on June 25th Delisted Games 23 May 2019 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).