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Now with added backing
After the initial excitement of Android consoles, thing have gone a little quiet. Now Ouya – the most promising of the batch – has got some Chinese investment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, it's received $10 million (£6.6 million) from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. (If you don't know Alibaba, it's where wholesalers go to stock up on vast amounts of stock. It sells everything, and was recently valued at $231 billion.) The plan is to integrate Ouya's software and games into Alibaba's own set-top boxes. Ouya would effectively become a white label games console.
The deal is yet to come to pass, according to the Journal. Alibaba is said to have made the investment last month. Which will have been a nice Christmas present for Ouya.
Alibaba's set-top boxes aren't on sale on these shores, so it's not clear how the deal would affect us. The investment could help Ouya gain more of a presence in a market dominated by the PS4 and Xbox One.
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There are now more than 1,000 Ouya games available but the console has struggled. Early reviews were poor, with critics complaining of shoddy build quality. We were also promised a new console every 12 months, so you could upgrade like with your smartphone. That's yet to materialise.
Amazon's Fire TV has also proved worthy competition. The set-top box doubles as a games console, with a hotline to Amazon's vast store of digital goodies.