Ouya, the game-console maker that has struggled to gain traction since its record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, has received a new injection of capital from a powerful strategic partner. Alibaba invested $10 million in the Santa Monica, Calif., company last month, according to people familiar with the matter. The two companies have discussed a plan to incorporate Ouya’s software and library of more than 1,000 games into Alibaba’s set-top box, the people said. The investment could help Ouya find new life in China, a market where gaming is primed for growth. China’s State Council recently lifted a ban on videogame consoles that had been in place since 2000, and dozens of new entrants are now flooding the country with low-priced set-top boxes that run cheap or free-to-play games. In investing in Ouya, Alibaba executives expressed interest in bringing the startup’s marketplace of games into its set-top boxes, though no such agreement has been reached as yet, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
Alibaba makes its own set-top boxes, including the recently-released Tmall Box 2, and licenses an operating system for devices made by other companies. These devices already offer a selection of games made by third-party developers. Partnering with Ouya to expand its library of games could help Alibaba get its devices into more Chinese homes, where it can sell digital content and get more visitors to its online store. Ouya also struck a deal last year to provide games to TV-streaming devices made by fast-growing Chinese tech startup Xiaomi. As a result of that deal, Ouya is working with its developers to translate their titles and help make them appeal to Chinese users. Ouya will continue to share a portion of sales from those games with developers, but it will also share a smaller portion with Xiaomi.
Via Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/alibaba-breathes-new-life-into-game-console-maker-ouya/
