OUYA update: launch delayed, Bing Gordon joins the board, and a new $15 million investment

There’s been some good news and bad news today for fans of the $99 OUYA Android gaming console. The good news: venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has led an investment drive worth $15 million for the project. As part of the deal ex-Chief Creative Officer of EA Bing Gordon will be joining the company’s board of directors.

The bad news: the console’s launch date will be pushed back from its scheduled June 4 retail release until June 25. It’s not a total disaster, just more of a mild irritation for those itching to get their hands on their OUYA.
Three weeks isn’t too long to wait, but surprisingly the decision to delay the entire launch doesn’t appear to be caused by a technical issue or problems with the console. Instead, it turns out that they simply can’t make enough of them. Here’s the statement from OUYA regarding the delay:

in order to meet their greater than expected demand, we decided to shift the launch date by a couple of weeks – three weeks – which will allow us to create more units and, basically, have more units on store shelves in June.

An interesting business decision if you ask me, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not the real issue lies in the defective controllers. Early adopters have been reporting that some of the controller’s buttons can become stuck underneath the faceplate. Fortunately, the problem has already been addressed, and all the new units will ship with the new fixed controllers.

The new controller keeps the existing design, the button holes have just been made larger to prevent them from sticking.

But that’s enough of the bad news, let’s look at what this new $15 million investment means for the up and coming console manufacturer. The investment firm KPCB, of which Bing Gordon is a member, along with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures, and Occam Partners, has put together a fund designed to support game development on OUYA. As well as the $8.5 million raised by Kickstarter backers, Julie Urhman, OUYA’s co-founder, confirmed that the investment would be used to bring exclusive titles to the console and to support small developers.
As already mentioned, the addition of Bing Gordon to the board of directors will no doubt bring a wealth of important connections to OUYA, thanks to his years of experience in the industry. This will be essential for capturing developer interest and securing distribution deals with retailers.
You’ll probably have also noted that NVIDIA continues to lend support to the project, which could prove to be a big opportunity for the company considering that it failed to secure hardware contracts for the next-generation PlayStation, and is rumoured to be missing out on the new Xbox console as well.
Waiting a little longer is sure to irritate eager fans a little, and that’s understandable. But ensuring that the launch goes well, making the right connections with retailers, and supporting developers is what’s going to determine OUYA’s long term success, and that’s surely worth the extra wait.

Via:Joystiq

Source:Wall Street Journal

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