Android-powered Ouya’s game store closes forever on June 25

It’s the end of the line for the Ouya, an Android-based game console that was one of Kickstarter’s first major success stories back in 2013.

Roughly four years after production on the tiny console was ceased, the platform’s game store is set to close, according to Razer. The gaming laptop and the accessory company purchased Ouya back in 2015. The company plans to shutter its Ouya marketplace, Forge TV and MadCatz Mojo game stores on June 25th, 2019.

Razer says that Ouya owners should make final purchases and download all games they’ve previously bought prior to the shutdown date.

“You will continue to have access to games that have been downloaded,” reads a statement from Razer. That said, any game that requires “purchase validation upon launch” will no longer work. In this case, Razer suggests for users to “contact the game developer for confirmation.”

Back in 2013, Ouya raised $8.5 million ($11.4 million CAD) through Kickstarter, with the console going on to be one of the crowdfunding platform’s most successful early Kickstarters. The company quickly burned through an additional $25 million USD ($33 million CAD) from various investors and was left in massive debt prior to Razer purchasing the company.

One of the Ouya’s most notable game releases is Vancouver-based developer Matt Thorston’s Towerfall. Before making its way to the PlayStation 4 and eventually the Switch, Towerfall was first released on the Ouya.

Back in late 2013, I argued that the Ouya was the perfect console for playing retro games through an emulator because it was an Android-based game console. With a few workarounds, this gave the console access to a wide variety of retro emulators, including the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and more.

While this was accurate at the time, a variety of far more powerful devices, including official platforms like the SNES and NES Classic, have been released over the last few years.

Source: Razer