73 percent of Ouya owners haven't bought a thing

In an interview with The Verge yesterday, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman reported that only 27 percent of Ouya console owners have bought games for the system. The rest have stuck with free (or pirated) titles. "Monetization on Ouya is so far better than we expected," Uhrman assured The Verge. "It takes time to build what traditional consoles have had decades to build." The topselling title on Ouya is presently Matt Thorson's TowerFall, which has brought in approximately $21,000 to date, after Ouya's 30 percent cut. The console's other leading title, Adam Spragg's Hidden in Plain Sight, has brought in a mere $4,381. "To say developers can't make money on Ouya -- I take offense to that," says Uhrman. "I'm sure the creators of TowerFall and Hidden in Plain Sight would take offense to that. The console has only been out for a month, and developers have only had access to the hardware for about six months." Uhrman contends that for a free-to-play console, 27 percent of users purchasing content -- at an attach rate of 8 percent for the majority of top-grossing titles -- is actually quite healthy. "I think there are a lot of social and mobile app developers that would kill for an 8 percent attach rate on a platform that's only 30 days old," she argues. "These numbers will grow as more gamers pick up consoles." "I believe that by the end of the year, we'll see a few developers telling us theyv'e made more than a million dollars on Ouya." Ouya recently launched a new campaign to match Kickstarter funds for developers who agree to a 6-month exclusivity deal with the console, but as our own Mike Rose observed, it doesn't appear to be a great deal for devs.