A rumor has appeared suggesting that Ouya is up for sale, after failing to restructure its debt.
A source with Fortune claims to have a confidential email from the company claiming the company is now on the auction block, and they are looking to sell quickly.
Ouya originally raised $ 15 million from a set of investors including Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield Fund, Occam Partners, Shasta Ventures and NVIDIA, followed by venture debt from TriplePoint Capital.
The amount TriplePoint lent was not publicly revealed, but it can be assumed it was more thant the $ 10 million Ouya raised from Alibaba two months ago.
Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman described it in this way:
Given our debtholder’s timeline, the process will be quick. We are looking for expressions of interest by the end of this month. Our focus now is trying to recover as much investor capital as possible.
We believe we’ve built something real and valuable. I continue to read the tweets and emails of our fans who play OUYA every day, and our catalog is now over 1,000 apps and 40,000 developers. We have the largest library of Android content for the TV (still more than Amazon) — hells ya!
Ouya started life as a crowdfunded microconsole, benefiting developers with easy publishing terms. While this led to a large library for games, the company failed to gain a foothold in the market. This could be partly partly attributed to tone deaf and occasionally controversial messaging, a worrisome delayed launch, hardware issues, and simply a lack of a compelling case for consumers.
However, what cannot be take from Ouya is how the company pursued a policy that encourage developers to experiment and make the games of their dreams. No one can take away the fact that Ouya encouraged and funded development of That Dragon, Cancer, and helped other projects with initiatives like the Free The Games Fund.
This also doesn't close the door on Ouya quite yet. The deal with Alibaba will deliver Ouya's library to Xiaomi TVs and set top boxes. Whoever decides to pick up Ouya will pick up that responsibility, and consequently, will be determining the future of a project that may have tried to grow too early.
