Production appear to be progressing according to schedule over at Ouya, which has just announced that the development kits for its self-titled debut game console will ship out to qualifying Kickstarter supporters on December 28, just as planned.

While every Ouya console that ever ships can be used for software development, these pre-retail units have some unknown differentiating feature, according to Ouya's official site, which calls them "rare drops."

The Android-powered console's SDK (or "ODK," as Ouya is calling it) is currently being tested and will become available "when the dev consoles ship to gamemakers." Ownership of an Ouya dev kit is not required to access the ODK, however, as it'll be freely and publicly available online. Conversely, an Ouya dev kit is required to see the console's custom Jelly Bean GUI in its current state.