You still can't touch an OUYA. Not until March, at the earliest, and that's only if you're a Kickstarter backer. However, one lucky group of folks already has access: game developers. Those among us who shelled out $700 -- as well as the 10 lucky studios who won that contest -- got an early jump on a pre-rooted OUYA dev kit, while those of us who dropped $95 (or more) are left in the lurch. Of course, those early units aren't exactly the couch-friendly consoles we expect to arrive in a few months, but they are representative of the final hardware.
And let's face it -- the OUYA is important. A crowdfunded, extremely inexpensive, open-source game console? That's not exactly the standard (heck, Sony's PlayStation 3 debuted with a $500 baseline). The OUYA is essentially taking the low-cost / high-performance aspect of mobile gaming and moving it into a TV-friendly space, and that concept has even spawned some imitators (the likes of which we'll assuredly see more).
But what do we know about actually using the OUYA? Beyond basic specs and a sporadic showering of images, we've never actually touched the thing. With that in mind, we asked a trio of developers who've spent the last month with their dev kits how they feel about the console thus far, and we've compiled their thoughts below. One month out, how does the OUYA dev kit stack up for developers? Let's find out!