Rumor: distressed Ouya is for sale

Ouya, the company behind the eponymous cube-shaped console with Android, is in financial trouble. Fortune reports this on the basis of an e-mail that the magazine received. The company would like to find a potential buyer before the end of the month.

Fortune relies on a confidential email that Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman allegedly sent to investors and advisers. In 2013, Ouya raised 15 million dollars, converted 13.7 million euros, from investors. In addition, it borrowed money from TriplePoint Capital. According to Fortune, Ouya would now have trouble paying off that loan, despite the recent $10 million investment from Chinese internet giant Alibaba.

According to Fortune, Uhrman wrote in the email that negotiations to restructure the company’s debts were unsuccessful. In order not to fall under the payment obligations, the company would have to be sold quickly. “We are seeking interest before the end of the month,” Uhrman wrote, according to Fortune.

Ouya started a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 to market the game console of the same name. It was soon successful. The initiators, including a number of big names from the industry, raised more than $8.5 million; the initial target amount was $950,000. The console costs $99. Originally, all games were required to be played for free, but Ouya got rid of that last year. Inside is a Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of memory. The device runs a modified version of Android.

The initiators wanted to create an open platform with Ouya. Anyone can make a game and the software is open source. That should make it easy for developers to release games. Although some 1,100 games are now available in Ouya’s collection, the small console itself proved less successful. That’s why Ouya expanded itself as a platform. Last year, the company signed an agreement to also release the game collection on Xiaomi set-top boxes. As part of Alibaba’s investment, Ouya games would also appear on that company’s devices.