Ouya Shipping December 28th to Developers

If you decided to invest in one of the developer kits for ouya, then it won't be long before you get your new console. The company has announced that both the SDK and the developer kits will be shipping on December 28th, right after the holiday. The rest of us, however, will have to wait until March 2013 to get our hands on an Ouya, though the hardware is virtually identical.

Interestingly, the developer kit is virtually identical to the consumer hardware. The Ouya was designed to be hacker friendly, after all. And the company has been quoted as saying that "every Ouya will be a dev console," letting anyone develop for the platform that wants to.

The Ouya is a bit of a wildcard in the console race, at this point. Potentially, it could revolutionize a fairly stagnant industry. Regardless of how cool the Kinect is, how we handle games hasn't fundamentally changed for over half a decade. And console development is notoriously difficult to get into. Just ask the creators of Fez, who encountered a bit of a problem when trying to update their game on Microsoft's console. Or any of the indie game developers who have been turned down by Microsoft.

Or, the Ouya could turn out to be a complete failure. There's that possibility. But at least it looks like the console won't end up being vaporware! They have a release date set, and developer devices prepped to go out. That's a good sign, right?

I'll admit, I'm pulling for Ouya. We need a fresh new player in the console space, if only to stop the entrenching that has been going on since casual games started to take off. But realistically, I give it a 1 in 5 chance of succeeding. Here's hoping we get lucky.

Engadget Photo by : Kickstarter