Ouya game sales figures released: It doesn’t look good for Android console gaming

Ouya game sales figures released: It doesn’t look good for Android console gaming

It’s been one month since the Ouya hit retail shelves, made available to the public for just $99. The Kickstarter campaign was a wild success, but the console and games have been met with an almost universal underwhelmed response. Sales figures of games have been revealed, and we can now get a much better sense of how well the Ouya is faring, and if the open Android gaming console model works.

We’ve made our feelings regarding the new wave of open, Android gaming consoles known. In short, the platform is about potential, and not really about must-have titles at the moment – mainly because it doesn’t quite have any just yet. Recently, Ouya seemed to come to this realization, and started a campaign to help fund Kickstarter games so long as they started off life as an Ouya exclusive for at least six months. Ouya game sales have recently been disclosed from various outlets and reveal that Ouya games don’t sell very much.

Ouya’s premiere (timed) exclusive TowerFall — a local four-player ranged weapons match in the vein of Smash Bros. – is fun enough to be considered the platform’s killer app. Not only do killer apps sell well on their own, but they practically sell the console. TowerFall, it has been revealed, could barely sell itself, much less the console. The game currently offers a free demo, as is the Ouya policy, and costs $15 to unlock the full version. If something is fun, then a reasonable price isn’t really much of a concern. However, after having enjoyed the game for a half hour, for instance, I felt $15 was simply too much for the simple title, and didn’t purchase it. I then learned that the game is just a six-month exclusive, and there are rumblings that the developer would bring the game to other platforms — and with more features — after that exclusivity window, and decided I might purchase it then. Perhaps other gamers felt the same way, because TowerFall has only sold round 2,000 copies so far. At $15 each, that’s $30,000; Ouya’s cut makes the revenue around $21,000. Not bad for a one-man developer that made a game for a new, crowdfunded, non-mainstream console. Selling 2,000 copies on a mainstream console, though, would be considered an enormous failure.

Ouya has not released how many consoles have sold at retail, but have said on numerous occasions that they have sold out. From the Kickstarter campaign, though, we can see that a little over 58,000 consoles were ordered. From just the Kickstarter campaign, only 3.4% of the Ouya audience bought TowerFall, the console’s killer app. If the console sold as well at retail as Ouya claims, then that very tiny percent is much smaller. Nimble Quest, a freemium RPG take on the classic game Snake, has been downloaded a little over 6,500 times, but has only managed 122 in-game purchases, generating $427 in net profit. Organ Trail, the humorously morbid take on The Oregon Trail, has been downloaded 13,112 times, but has only made 501 sales. Hidden in Plain Sight, a cross between SpyParty and the multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, employed a Humble Indie Bundle style pay-what-you-want system and made around $4,300 on 1,900 purchases.

Most of us likely haven’t sold 1,900 or even 122 of anything we’ve ever made, so these numbers are certainly respectable. Unfortunately, though, respect alone doesn’t sell a console or put food on the tables of developers. So far, it would seem that exclusively developing for Ouya isn’t an enticing endeavor. Luckily for developers, Ouya seems to be fine with timed exclusives, so if a game doesn’t do well on the Kickstarted console, the potential of monetary salvation is just over the horizon. With Ouya helping to fund Kickstarter games, that should only help the console’s game developers.

For now, it seems like porting to the Ouya is the way to go — and only if the game is already controller-friendly or making it controller-friendly would be easy enough, and only if you’re an indie that could use some cash in the low thousands. A huge developer that is already prolific on mobile platforms, like Square Enix for example, may not really see the point of porting to the Ouya to only make a few thousand bucks.

So, it would seem that the Ouya model works for its popular titles, in that a game can break even or make a little bit of money, but developers likely won’t be too thrilled when their game only brings in $427 in profit. Hopefully, Ouya’s new funding campaign will be the proverbial milkshake that brings new gamers to its open, Android gaming yard.