I don't know if that was a primary reason that Ouya didn't do well. It was easy enough to get gift cards and there were plenty of free play games in the store. Ouya's big fault was it was a phone playing phone games, and had an idiot CEO that was just there for the lulz. It didn't solve a problem, it just tried to be some console without having anything to differentiate it from the other stuff. It had some weird and cool games that made it on to other platforms, but it didn't set itself apart from the competition. There were a lot of quality problems controllers early on, that didn't help, and neither did the fact that retail operations got product before backers did. SBCs like the Pi didn't help it either, it was already obsolete when it was new and didn't get any fresher. The only good thing to come out of it was the controllers were bluetooth and could be used elsewhere, but the aforementioned quality problems stopped even that perk.