TechnesstivityRoy Bahat named as OUYA’s Chairman of the Board
Ouya is adding to its numbers as the company approaches its March launch of its “game-changer” console. The company announced last Friday that it has appointed a chairman of the board, as well as key lead roles in its software and engineering teams.
Roy Bahat will serve as Chairman. Additionally, the company has filled out key technology roles, with EA, Trion, and Pivotal Labs alumnus Steve Chamberlin leading software engineering and Sony Pictures’ Raffi Bagdasarian driving software product development. Roy Bahat served for five years as President of IGN Entertainment, the global leader in video games media. He is also a lecturer at UC Berkeley, where he teaches media. Roy holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar.
New Head of Engineering Steve Chamberlin, has acquired a lot of experience doing similar things at Trion Worlds where he helped to develop RIFT and at EA where he created many games the Playstation, XBox, and other systems. Stating on his blog ”I know what a pain it is to deal with the balky dev kits, tools, and mind-numbing technical requirements. I’m thrilled to be introducing a new kind of video game console that will open up the TV platform like never before.”
Seasoned media executive Raffi Bagdasarian joins OUYA to drive software product development including platform services and user experience. Raffi recently served as Vice President, Product Development at Sony Pictures Television’s Digital Networks Group, where he oversaw the publishing of media experiences to millions of engaged users on such platforms as Xbox Live, PlayStation 3, Roku, iOS, and Android. In reply to a tweet made on Twitter.com by new Chairman Roy Bahat; “Also pumped that @Chamberlin_S and @raffibag have joined@playouya – boom. @juhrman will be a recruiter in her next life.” Raffi replies “@roybahat @Chamberlin_S @playouya @juhrman You’re pumped??? I’M PUMPED!”
A lot of positivity in the Ouya camp right now it is worth mentioning that more than 1,000 developers have inquired about working on Ouya since the end of the Kickstarter campaign last month, and it has received formal applications from more than 50 distributors interested in releasing the console internationally.
