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A number of developers working on the recently launched Android console Ouya have revealed their sales figures on the system.
Speaking to Edge and Gamasutra, developers largely praised the new console on the market and have lauded its openness, although some have criticised how the console has been marketed and the quality of the controller.
All games on the system can be played in some form for free, and developers have expressed their surprise at some higher than expected sales, although others have questioned the conversion rates from downloads to actual purchase.
Indie developer Matt Thorson revealed that so far his title Towerfall had sold around 2,000 copies at $15 each. He described the sales as “surprisingly high” given it was a new IP on a new system, and said it had warranted making a PC port.
Bombsquad creator Eric Froemling said sales had peaked at close to 200 a day, although this had fallen to around 70 after a general drop off in sales following the first few weeks of launch. Another developer, Adam Spragg, who developed local-multiplayer title Hidden in Plain Sight, said he sold 1,900 copies of his title, which he also called a “pleasant surprise”. Overall he claimed to have grossed $4,381.
Shay Pierece, who ported Bennett Foddy’s game Get On Top, said in the 24 days after launching the title it had garnered 9,700 downloads, making 520 sales and generating $728 after Ouya’s cut, a conversion rate of 5.36 per cent.
Not all developers were satisfied with early sales however. Ryan Wiemeyer of indie group The Men Who Wear Many Hats said Organ Trail had only managed to meet half of his low-end predictions, selling 501 games from 13,112 downloads, an attachment rate of 3.8 per cent. He stated that we wasn’t sure it had been worth the man hours yet to port it over, and revealed that Ouya sales only currently represented 0.1 per cent of the titles total 400,000 copies sold.
Mura Interactive’s Joe Albrethsen said that although its game was currently in a running beta for those that pre-order the title, the conversion rate from Ouya users was “really bad”, and had come in at under one per cent.
A similar small conversion rate was felt by NimbleBit release Nimble Quest, which totalled 6,508 downloads and 122 purchases, resulting in $427 profit. David Marsh said however he would “wholeheartedly recommend Ouya” to indie developers that have an existing pipeline to Android and are interested in what the company is trying to achieve through providing an open platform.
It’s not currently clear how many units of Ouya have been sold since its launch, although around 60,000 units have been released to the system’s Kickstarter backers.
