Ouya shipping dev consoles this December

If you spent $699 or more on the $8.5 million Ouya KickStarter back in August, you'll be happy to know that your developer unit will be shipping out on time. The team behind the Android-powered console has announced that they will be shipping the Ouya to developer-tier backers on December 28, 2012. This puts the company just within the estimated delivery window of December 2012.

“Yes, we are shipping these to you on time, as promised,” the company said in a recent update. “The dev consoles are an early version of the Ouya console and controller designed for developers to test their games on Ouya. Our Kickstarter developers are the first to get a crack at 'em! We're psyched to have you on board, and we can't wait to see what pours from your brain!”

For backers of any tier, Ouya chief executive officer Julie Uhrman also announced that usernames can be claimed on December 25.

“By December 25, we'll email each of you a link to activate your account. For those of you who responded to our survey about preferred usernames, you'll be able to confirm your choice. For the handful of popular names that had conflicts, we broke the tie(s) by honoring whomever backed Ouya first on Kickstarter. And, if any of you didn't respond-or didn't get your preferred username-you can choose a name when December 25 rolls around,” said Uhrman in the announcement.

The rest of the backer-purchased Ouya consoles are expected to ship during the estimated March 2013 release window. Other interested buyers can pre-order their own Ouya consoles here, with an estimated release window of April 2013.