OUYA may have lived a short life of popularity here in the states,(which I was personally hoping wouldn’t happen as I was extremely excited about it in the beginning)and although not dead it just isn’t able to deliver the type of experience to home gaming that many thought or hoped it would. OUYA has found some solace in the fact surely that they were able to expand a little through the OUYA Everywhere initiative, which saw the company’s library of available games make it to other devices like the Mad Catz M.O.J.O. micro console. The thing with micro consoles here in the U.S. is that they just can’t seem to capture a large enough portion of the gaming market with comeptition from the likes of the Fire TV, Google’s soon to be Android TV and mainstream consoles like the Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo’s Wii U.
Factor in the easy option that consumers can just plug their smartphone or tablet to the big screen and play a large number of the more notable titles that are available on OUYA, and there just doesn’t seem to be a good reason to spend the extra cash on such a thing. That’s why OUYA seems content with their recent partnership with Xiaomi, because they see huge growth opportunity in the Chinese market for something like what they have. Quite honestly, that might be true, as there are more micro consoles that serve the same purpose in China as the OUYA attempted to here and with more success, so it would stand to reason that they have a good chance of flourishing there.
According to the report, OUYA won’t be launching a micro console in the region though, but rather bringing their library of games to Xiaomi’s smart TV’s and set top boxes due to launch, which is basically their OUYA Everywhere initiative we just talked about for the Mad Catz micro console. Instead of releasing new hardware, their partner, Xiaomi, will be handling all the hardware parts and OUYA will just continue bringing great games to their software platform, seeing games loaded onto Xiaomi’s MiTV and MiBox. OUYA has some really great games, and it definitely makes more sense to see them pop up on devices from other OEM’s that can support gaming. Where OUYA was less than successful was with their delivery approach in trying to compete with an already crowded console market, something it seems to be bypassing with their attempt to expand into the Chinese region. China is a huge gaming market, solidifying themselves in third place in that respect, with revenue growth to a total of almost $14 billion in 2013. If there is anywhere that OUYA might be able to truly succeed, the Chinese market might be it.