Most of the time, when you launch a new console, you can be confident that almost everyone who purchases the hardware will buy at least one game. Not so with the Ouya, which CEO Julie Uhrman tells The Verge has only seen 27 percent of its user base drop even a single dime on a game. The news comes after many Ouya developers have gone public with disappointing initial sales numbers on the console, ranging from the hundreds to the low thousands.

Some may assume that this means Ouya users are simply pirating games en masse or using the system's array of emulators to play legally questionable ROMs of classic games. More likely, though, Ouya owners are simply taking advantage of the system's unique requirement that every game be available in some sort of free-to-play form. Indeed, you don't even have to enter credit card information to get a lot of value out of the system—there are totally free games like Super Crate Box and titles like Towerfall that are almost fully functional in their free-to-play form, save for some gameplay and map options.

Still, Uhrman said that things aren't as bad as they look. For 13 of the top 20 games on the system, she said, at least eight percent of free downloads end up being converted into a paid purchase. "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 30 days old," Uhrman said. "These numbers will grow as more gamers pick up consoles and as we attract more developers, and I believe that by the end of the year we'll see a few developers telling us they've made more than a million dollars on Ouya."

Uhrman better hope so. Even if the system itself is being sold at a small profit (which is possible, but not publicly confirmed), the company is set up to make most of its money from a 30 percent share of all software downloads. What's more, you want players to be locked in via game purchases if you're going to convince them to buy in to the kind of mobile-style annual hardware upgrades Ouya has planned.