When you play an Ouya, you can try a demo of every single game available, without ever having to buy a thing. Which is exactly what most owners of the tiny Android console are doing.
In an interview with The Verge, CEO Julie Uhrman has said that while “Monetization on Ouya is so far better than we expected”, 73% of owners haven’t paid a cent for a game.
The same report also reveals that “13 of Ouya’s 20 top grossing games have recorded an average of 8 per cent of gamers upgrading from the free to paid versions of their titles.”
Uhrman says Ouya is happy with that kind of business, and hey, maybe they are. The console runs Android games, and the phone game market would be happy with that kind of turnover.
Only…the Ouya isn’t a phone. It’s not going to be going for the same quick, disposable experiences as mobile games. If developers need to tailor their games to the console in order to sell them (the Ouya has its own store, and doesn’t just link to Google Play), what incentive are they going to have if most people aren’t buying?
Ouya CEO defends game sales as ‘better than we expected’ [The Verge]
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12 responses to “Most Ouya Owners Aren’t Buying A Damn Thing”
I haven’t touched mine since I got it. Played it for maybe an hour, but was disappointed with the games. Hasn’t been on since.
Same – The games are average, wireless is buggy as hell – (I can hear lots of ‘I told you so’s) – I thought it’d make a great XBMC, but there have been issues setting it up apparently – And I just cant be stuffed… To be honest, I was really disappointing in the delivery debacle (more I told you so’s !) So, to teach them a lesson (?) I just wont use it….
There !
GC
I wanted to chime in with an “I told you so!”, but I actually just feel sorry for you.
I really hope they get a patch out or something so you can at least set it up as an XBMC.
More demos = less purchases.
The whole demos = less sales is kinda sad. I have bought a game that I completely dismissed until I played the demo. Although I also found out that ZombiU is not for me. Would probably have picked it up in a year or two from a bargain bin.
So…they weren’t expecting to sell anything? 😛
Part of the problem is that the Ouya can’t play Google Play store games (or apps for that matter). Therefore, when you buy a game on Ouya, it’s restricted to Ouya even if it’s available for other android devices (phone, tablet etc.) Therefore, if you buy FFIII on Ouya, you can’t then play it on your phone without buying a second copy through Google (or vice versa).
I can understand why they did that, because that’s how they make their money. It’d be senseless from a business perspective to allow Google Play apps on the Ouya because then they’d be cut out of the money-making pie altogether. But it still sucks for users. I own GTA3 on Android for example, but I can’t play it on Ouya because I need Gapps to install it. Hopefully down the track some enterprising devs work out how to port Gapps to the Ouya, or maybe even a whole new rom for it (Cyanogenmod on Ouya would be… interesting!), but I doubt it’ll happen any time soon.
Could it be that modders and Indies bought the thing… And not consumers?
I have an Ouya and have bought a few games (esp. Ice Rage & BombSquad), and yes wireless can be buggy. But honestly, I use my wireless ps3 controller for every Ouya game that supports it because it doesn’t suffer the same very slight lag issue that the Ouya ones can and generally improves the whole experience.
The thing is, Ouya is basically a system that is ideal for gaming on the couch with friends, even for some one player games, but there will be people who are waiting for the second ouya shipment that will (hopefully) deliver them their extra controllers.
Is it a great system now? No. Could it be in the next 12 months? Absolutely.
Give it 6 months and some firmware updates and more importantly for large developers to start releasing some quality titles on it (once post release sales figures tell them it’ll be worth it) and we could be onto a winner. I backed the Ouya not because it was a established corporation getting in on the kickstarter bandwagon, but because I thought given some time and $$ the Ouya could really turn out to be a winner. I invested $150 and worse case scenario I figure at this point I’ll break out roughly even.
I’ve downloaded heaps of titles, but so far only one has been good enough to merit a purchase.
The issue isn’t the users, it’s the content.
When the main thing everybody said this is great for was running ROMs from the 8bit and 16bit era are we surprised that games aren’t selling.
It’s unfortunate but that is what demos are for: they allow the user to try the game before the buy.
Thus if the demo shows the user the game is crap they are unlikely to buy the whole game.
This is why there are next to no demos these days: publishers do not wish for anyone to find out their games are junk until after they fork out $100 AUD for them.
27% of your user base buying something is actually quite good. Plenty of iOS and Android users don’t buy a bean. Obviously that’s a much bigger userbase, but 27% doesn’t surprise me. It’s also still early days.
It’s all about xbmc for me. Games are a bit crap when compared with the xbox sitting next to it