Amazon has entered another product market with the announcement of the Fire TV, an Android-powered set-top box that streams audio and video, and plays games. The Fire TV is available now for $99.
According to Amazon, the Fire TV is designed purely to outpace it’s competitors. The 0.7-inch-thick box features a quad-core CPU with 2 GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Adreno 320 GPU, and a dual-band wireless radio with two antennas for 1080p streaming. Long story short, as far as tech specs go, it trounces the Roku 3 and Apple TV with ease.
The gaming aspect of the box is geared more towards non-traditional gamers, people who may already tap about on a smartphone or tablet. To get into the game, players will have to purchase an Xbox-like add-on controller that retails for $39.99. The controller also comes with 1,000 Amazon coins, a digital currency used for buying games from the Fire store. If a game supports it, players can choose to use their smartphone, tablet, or Fire TV Remote instead.
Amazon’s in-house development team, Amazon Games, plans to build exclusive games for the device. Sev Zero, a third-person shooter/tower defense hybrid, is one such title and everyone who purchases the Fire TV Controller will receive it for free. Amazon hopes that by the end of next month “thousands” of games will be available from developers and publishers like 2K Games, Disney, Double Fine Productions, Electronic Arts, Sega, Telltale Games, and Ubisoft. Third party titles like Minecraft: Pocket Edition and Gameloft’s Asphalt 8: Airborne are already available for the device.
Amazon has pegged the average cost of a Fire TV game at $1.85, with prices starting at $0.99. Free-to-play titles will be available as well. But what else can the Fire TV do?
Obviously, it’s more than just games and streaming airplay (known here as “Video Fling”). The Bluetooth-based Fire TV remote has integrated voice search allowing you to speak your query directly into it. Other features include instant access to photos on Amazon Cloud Drive, along with Amazon’s X-Ray service for movies and TV shows, which allows users to look up details on actors and more while watching content. A feature called FreeTime allows parents to set up a cordoned-off area with kid-specific content. And the Advanced Streaming and Prediction (ASAP) program predicts what you want to watch and cues it up for instant streaming.
Apps for Twitch, Hulu, MLB.TV, the WWE Network, and Netflix will all be available for the box, with Amazon Instant Video leading the charge, but HBO Go curiously missing. Music will come from Pandora and iTunes Radio, along with MP3 content purchased on Amazon.
It’s been rumored that Google will produce their own set-top box and Apple is expected to announce a revamped Apple TV box soon. How will Fire TV fare against these competitors? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
