> The gaming aspect of this will make it a winner. OUYA's big problem is that it didn't do streaming and was a bit clunky. Amazon has a big game library and just needs controller support.
I think the gaming aspects are the worst part and are entirely useless. Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen? Goofy games are fun on a 4-7" screen because expectations are low. On my TV I expect a crazy immersive experience, not "Candy Crush".
Perhaps they would have been better served by spending their time getting HBO-Go, Starz/Encore and Spotify all hooked into their little box. If they want to be the central hub for all things "media" and want to compel people to move off of their existing platform ( Roku and ATV ) it seems like they need to offer a more complete package.
Over 100 million Nintendo Wii consoles were sold. Now, we can bicker about how many of those buyers were into casual games or not, but regardless:
The market exists.
And meanwhile, there are phone games that are comparable to the big headline titles of the Wii etc - Bard's Tale, Oil Rush, GTA, etc.
If Amazon pushes the gamepad hard for the Fire TV, we could definitely see it in that space.
I just hope there are enough 2 player games worthwhile.
Give it time. These are usually 3rd party apps not built by the provider of the platform (as a note, my company just finished building Starz/Encore/Movieplex Play for Xbox 360). The important thing is that Amazon provides an Ecosystem,it just needs some time for all the other offerings to get on there.
The SDK just opened up to all third parties today as well https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx1K5ORNN...
I'm looking forward to XBMC or other local streaming software coming to the platform. If that happens, this will literally be the ultimate set top box for me.
The Amazon Fire TV runs Fire OS 3.0, based on Android Jelly Bean (API level 17).
Also, don't sell mobile gaming short. There are current generation mobile chipsets capable of PS3 level graphics (especially given that many smartphones now have a resolution greater than that big television), and in this case they don't even have to live within the power bounds of a battery power deviced, opening up the high end (they claim it's a "dedicated" GPU, which is an odd phrasing in the era of SoCs).
PS3 level graphics are beyond satisfactory for a huge range of gaming genres (especially given that many of the PS3s limitations were courtesy of the 256MB/256MB memory limit).
mobile games are much closer to ps2. Gta3 was released for ps2 and now runs on android. My experience with gta3 wasn't a smooth one, although maybe a galaxy s5 would have a more consistent/smoother experience.
I feel like we have a ways before we get to true ps3 graphics. But I also agree not to discredit mobile games. For the price (about $140) and all the other benefits you recieve from the streaming video offerings, doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.
In this case while I was hoping it would be something really compelling like a Tegra K1, it's a 1.7Ghz quad-core Krait 300 APQ8064 with Adrena 320 graphics. That pushes about 225 million triangles per second, while the PS3 pushes 275 million. The PS2 pushed about 35 million. Of course triangles per second is an entirely incomplete metric, though the PS3 and the Snapdragon feature similar memory bandwidth (and fill rate), though the PS3 has dedicated video memory while the Snapdragon shares it with the CPU.
Overhead of Android and OpenGL ES eats into this significantly of course, but the fact that such a comparison is at all viable is pretty incredible.
Young kids. There are lots of them about.
PS4 is very expensive. iPads are expensive, fragile, don't have user accounts, and you can't keep an eye on what's on screen from the kitchen while cooking dinner after school.
My 8 year old would eat it up. He LOVES his iPad games. If he can plan on the TV with his friends, he would be thrilled.
And I'd be fine dropping $99 for a box and < $5 for games.
You may expect a "crazy immersive experience" but I would venture a guess that you are not the casual mobile gamer.
To me, the Wii U was a failure in this regard. They tried to marry the "fun game in my hand" with the "fun game on the big screen" and the result was a messy, confusing experience.
One thing to keep in mind is mobile is a form factor, but no longer a "platform." In this case, the platform is Android. There are plenty of game types that would cross over well. Even better if you could sync state between platforms for a seamless anywhere experience. Imagine playing FFVII on your phone, and then when you get home pick up a PS2 like controller and continue playing that same game on your HDTV?
I think the biggest hurtle is the fact that consumers already have similar devices, and at $99 its not like the FireTV is a no-brainer. If they timed it right, and people are "rolling over" to the next set of devices?
Infinity Blade, Real Racing, etc. show you CAN get "crazy immersive experience" (or near enough thereto that 95% of users won't notice a difference) on a "phone". Given an iPad Mini (retail replacement cost $250 so you know it costs less than that to make) take away the HD+ display, touchscreen, cellular radio, battery, speakers, mic, and most of the flash storage, and you've got a sub-$99 dual-core 64-bit box that ALL your iOS games - from Candy Crush to Infinity Blade III - can run on right now ... and anything you get for that big screen can, in turn, run on your phone when Mom says you have to get in the car and you want to take the in-progress game with you.
By making it easy to port Android apps they could do well with this.
The market has so far been defined by the capabilities of mobile devices. That means simplified controls and gameplay designed for short sessions. There's no technical reason for these limitations in the streaming box market, OUYA failed and Amazon might fail but the market still exists. Consumers have bought tens of millions of these devices just to watch TV, eventually someone will be able to expand to tap the couch gaming market. The price point is low, install base high, and the processing power is just sitting there and waiting.
But if the Fire TV gets enough traction there could be more "real" games on Android.
that's not quite the same as a whole new platform.
Most game development companies have a multi-platform approach. Either they accomplish this with cross-platform development tools, or target iOS, Android, and XBox/Consoles separately.
Amazon has already gone through motions to making getting your Android app onto their Kindle Fire devices smoother, so I imagine getting it onto the FireTV wouldn't be much different.
So the story goes, you have a successful game that is gainin traction on multiple platforms and you want to expand your user base. Add game controller support to your android version, and now you're in every Prime customer's living room? edit: This is of course if people purchase the device, so that's the starter.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/app...
Netflix is fast obviously because you are just telling the chromecast to stream netflix itself, not "casting" it to chromecast. Same goes with youtube.
However "casting" performance for me is even worse than the described .3fps on my Chromebook Pixel that isn't running ChromeOS. And my LAN is fast enough to use mplayer over ssh/x-forwarding... Trying chrome tab casting in Debian on a Chromebook Pixel burns the Pixel up, with it being very obvious that the Pixel is the bottleneck.
Trying to video encode the "cast" tab without using hardware support maybe? I'm not sure, I haven't really investigated it further.
No problems. It played fine.
Maybe I'll try that myself later.
Incidentally I've just discovered that my Roku can have local videos streamed to it from my S3. It works flawlessly.
But I wasn't using my new access point as a router. For unrelated reasons, I replaced the 10+ year-old router with something newer and the Chromecast started working flawlessly even though I hadn't changed anything on the wireless side.
This is an AirPlay issue, right? For example, when I go to pause a song that is being AirPlayed to my Airport Express, there is a noticable delay before the song stops playing.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/17/amazons-instant-video-app-a...
That's why you can use the Kindle app on your iOS, or Android, or web browser. Or Amazon Prime on PS3/4, Xbox One/360, Roku, iOS.
They don't have to kill the iPad; they just have to win every book reader.
I totally agree with that statement, I just was taken aback by the word "constantly."
http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/setti...
Someone or some company is going to have to completely shatter our imaginations of this market. Until then, good luck getting any massive success.
I have been aching for a large library of easy and casual games I can share with my wife forever. She doesn't care about the AAA games and I'm willing to give those up if it means we can play together.
Also, the standards for games these days is really low. I see children playing total crap all the time. Gone are the days you beg your mom to spend $60 buying you one game where upon you had to spend the next 6 months playing it before you would get another one. Parents will buy a game on their phone and hand it to their kid like its the pacifier of the 21st century.
There are tons of dongles and sticks with gaming added as an afterthought. I'm interested in seeing somebody truly tackle the space Ouya promised to deliver - the low-cost Android gaming device.
Seriously, Google needs to wake up and notice that other people are doing a better job with Android than they are.
The gaming aspect of this will make it a winner. OUYA's big problem is that it didn't do streaming and was a bit clunky. Amazon has a big game library and just needs controller support.
As a parent, a $100 streaming box and game console that has cheap/free games is very appealing.
As a developer, the economics of game development for such a console is not so great, but maybe IAP would make it worthwhile.