Ouya says 73 percent of its owners have yet to buy a game

Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman says the new Android console is performing well, despite reports that game sales have been slow so far.

Although the most popular paid games for the download-only console have sold only a few thousand copies, Uhrman said the numbers are encouraging. "Monetization on Ouya is so far better than we expected," she told The Verge. "It takes time to build what traditional consoles have had decades to build. "

She said it was "too early" to draw conclusions from early stats, that suggest many gamers are taking full advantage of the game's library of free-to-play demos, and are not upgrading to full versions.

She said that, since Ouya's launch last month, 27 percent of owners have paid for a game, adding that 13 of Ouya's 20 top grossing games have managed an average rate of eight percent of gamers upgrading from the free to paid versions.

"There are a lot of social and mobile app developers that would kill for an eight percent attach rate on a platform that's 30 days old," she 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 was speaking in the wake of news from TowerFall developer Matt Thorson that his game had made about $21,000 since launch, despite consistently sitting at the top of the Ouya sales charts.

"To say developers can't make money on Ouya, I take offense to that," she said. "The console has only been out for a month, and developers have only had access to the hardware for about six months. We really like what we see so far, and so do developers and gamers."

You can read Polygon's full review of Ouya here.