Alibaba invests over 1 billion yen in home video game machine OUYA that can be bought for about 10,000 yen, what is its purpose?

ByLuis Perez

It is 99 dollars (about 12,000 yen) that you can purchase the controller and stationary game console together at once "OUYA"is. OUYA started a project with Kickstarter in 2012, gathered a lot of attention by collecting 1 million dollars (about 120 million yen) in just 8 hours from recruitment. Although the start was just fine OUYA, the game market has been struggling hard and we have not lost the strongholds such as Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox. To such OUYA, China's largest Internet related company "AlibabaIt is known that 10 million dollars (about 1.2 billion yen) investment was made.

Alibaba Breathes New Life Into Game - Console Maker Ouya - Digits - WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/alibaba-breathes-new-life-into-game-console-maker-ouya/


OUYA is a popular project that collected 8,600,000 dollars (about 1 billion yen) in Kickstarter. Handling starts in Target, Best Buy, Amazon, etc in 2013, and features such as low price and OS equipped with Android have attracted the attention of many gamers at the beginning of sales. However, low ratings are gathered for reviews, and compared with Amazon's Fire TV, which is an inexpensive game streaming terminal, and in the American stationary game machine market are struggling hard.

Also, 73% of OUYA users have also noticed that they have not purchased a paid version of the game, and it is obvious that they were struggling in game sales as well.

73% of OUYA users turned out not to purchase a paid version of the game - GIGAZINE


In China, the sale of video game machines was banned in 2000, but this has been recently lifted and now the Chinese low price fixed game machine market is full of numerous game machines. Alibaba also launched its own stationary game machine "Tmall Box 2" in the Chinese market, and it seems that several third party games have already been released.

Among them, some source says "Why does Alibaba make a contribution to OUYA?" A source says, "You can use OUYA's software and more than 1000 game lineups on stationary game machines that Alibaba offers in the Chinese market To do so ".

Also, Ali Baba, the biggest e-commerce market in China, makes many investments in Silicon Valley startups many times, which is thought to make a foothold to the American market. In 2014, Alibaba invested $ 215 million (about 25.5 billion yen) in Tango which is a mobile message service startup, and also invested in Quixey and ShopRunner, linking strategic alliances with startup By doing so, we are eager to import the latest technology and entertainment into the Chinese market. Also, Alibaba bought about 10% of the American game company Kabam for 120 million dollars (about 14 billion yen), which is also expected to sell Kabam's mobile game in the Chinese market in the name of Alibaba It is.

ByJon Fingas

Meanwhile, OUYA can also search for cheap manufacturing destinations outside the United States from the high pressure of competing services and high manufacturing cost, and allow licenses to play games that OUYA can play on other game machines If he thinks he is beginning to think about it, if he realizes a strategic alliance with Alibaba, he may be able to establish a foothold for selling OUYA to the developing Chinese market.

Prior to being invested by Alibaba, OUYA received a $ 15 million investment (about 1.8 billion yen) from several companies and organizations such as chip manufacturer NVIDIA, and in 2014 it partnered with Xiaomi, Has begun to be provided by Xiaomi's TV streaming terminal.

In addition, OUYA is a set of main unit and controller, and it is sold for 77.60 dollars (about 9200 yen) at the stage of writing the article.

Amazon.com: OUYA Console and Controller: Video Games