Dead game news: Ouya and Razer stores closing down.

[Marscaleb]

So I thought I would share this piece of Dead Game News for anyone who is interested.
The Ouya and Razer Forge TV Services are shutting down on June 25.

For those who never heard about it, the Ouya was an indie game console that came out a few years back.  They had a hugely successful kickstarter campaign.  The big thing about it was that anyone who had the console also had a dev kit, so anyone could make a game for this system and put it on the store.  While they never got the number of sales that the big-name consoles had, they did get popular enough that I saw some of these for sale at a Best Buy. That's pretty impressive for some indie startup company.

Sadly, the console eventually faded outside of people's attention and people stopped using them.  The Ouya company sold their assets and Razer wound up in control of the online store.  They've kept it up for several years but now they are closing shop.

 

What this means for dead games:  While most of the games on the Ouya were also ported to the Android apps and/or Steam, there still were a number of titles that were exclusive to Ouya, and since the system only had an online store these are now going to be completely unobtainable.  Once again, online only rears its ugly head.

 

Honestly, most of the titles on the store were crappy ports of crappy android games.  And most of the good games were also available on Steam, or even the big name consoles.  But there were still a few titles that young developers put together because of the excitement that an indie console brought.  They didn't really look like much, but they were still fun.  And isn't that what games are supposed to be about?
I honestly don't know what titles were not ported somewhere else.  The few I remember most fondly can be found on other systems.  But even so, many of these games were really made for a home console like Ouya.  I see that Bombsquad can be found on Android and iOS devices, but the game wasn't built to be played on a little touchscreen.  It was meant to be played on a big living room screen while you and your friend have a good time blasting the hell out of each other.
I'm glad to see that Amazing Frog came to Steam, but other games like No Brakes Valet is just going to fade into obscurity.