Today Ouya announced that the launch of their upcoming console has been delayed by three weeks, slipping from June 4th to June 25th. Ouya’s CEO Julie Uhrman says the delay was necessary in order to meet “unanticipated demand” for the new, indie focused console.
“We want to make sure that we have enough units to satisfy all the early orders and to make sure there’s enough units on the shelf when we go live in June,” Uhrman told Polygon earlier this morning.
In addition to the delay, Uhrman announced that the Ouya Corporation has secured about $15 million in private, venture capital funding. Previously, the company was kept aloft by public donations from their highly successful Kickstarter campaign, which managed to generate approximately $8.5 million dollars, several times more than the original $950,000 goal that the company started with. Uhrman says that her company was always interested in getting private funding for the system, but investors were skeptical about the consoles chances. That changed after the company’s success on Kickstarter.
In return for the funding, former Electronic Arts COO Bing Gordon will be joining the Ouya Board of Directors.
Early Ouya units were sent out to members of the press and Kickstarter backers a few months ago, and those “preview” consoles generated less than favorable first impressions, as many users complained about the system’s severe controller latency and clunky interface. Ouya says that criticisms directed at the console so far have been unfair, and they’ve promised that the system’s problems will be ironed out in time for the system’s “official” launch in June. Recently, Kim Swift, the creator of Valve’s Portal series, announced that her next game would be exclusive to the Ouya.
