Sounds bad for the Ouya. I’m not sure what the article means by core focused. Amazon’s going to make it a core focus of their business? How much market is there for another one of these?
Edit: what will they name this thing? Kindle Home sounds… bad.
I’m assuming it means core gaming enthusiast target audience (i.e. gamers with HD consoles), not casual or social gamers.
I hope they call the games marketplace the Kindle Konsole Katalog.
I am pretty sure in about one year’s time we will all be laughing about the Amazon ColecoVision.
Yeah, i can’t see this working. They will face basically the same problems as the Ouya.
Amazon is huge of course, but i don’t think even they can just pull AAA games out of their collective assses and if they don’t do it themselves, there just plain isn’t going to be any.
the $199 kindle fire says that you’re wrong
Surely, like an Ouya but with a big corporation behind.
The article suggests they are going to do it themselves and says that Amazon has been busy hiring up game developers.
How so?
It is just a tablet, not a system that plays full blown AAA games.
the problem is that while it is fun playing games away from home on my phone/tablet, the experience does not translate well to the big screen with a game pad, because none of the games are designed for this.
This is what killed the ouya. Why would I want to play an android game at home when I can play a game with more depth instead?
There seem to be plenty of PC games that don’t have a lot of depth. A lot of people don’t want depth – they want Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies or Puzzle Jewel. They want a 20 minute gaming experience. I know I choose not to play a lot of games at any given time I sit down to do some gaming because I don’t feel like I have an undivided hour or two to play something.
If they can deliver a $99 console with their branding on it that comes with a few games and their game store has games for $10 or less, I could see them getting some traction. My problem with Ouya is I have no idea if they will around a year from now. I don’t have that kind of misgiving about Amazon.
I just don’t think a home console focused on android games can survive (as a games console) as things stand.
I’ve bought tons of games for my android phone and XBL arcade has a ton of 20 minute games like you talk about. Hell, i just bought castlestorm for PC. It isn’t like i don’t like these games, but when i want something serious, i don’t look at android and unless amazon funnels tens of millions of dollars in to making these games, i don’t see this changing.
The problem is that they want to somehow get people who object to paying $0.99 for a game to spend 100 times that for a new device whose functionality is probably duplicated by something they already own.
It may not be as much of a problem if their Android console can also double as a Roku-like device along with a functional web browser that works on the TV.
Indeed - They may actually be taking the route Bill Gates wanted Microsoft to take - become the De facto standard machine to occupy peoples home for use for streaming, AND easy amazon purchases and perhaps even surfing the web. They have a very very large userbase, which is worth gold if they do this right. Hell, they can probably even manufacture and sell the machine at a loss, if they offer rentals and streaming through.
I don’t think this will be able to take advantage of the same developer goodwill that Ouya did. The Amazon app store is extremely underwhelming from a sales perspective, requires you to give up control of your pricing and has a somewhat opaque review process. Amazon itself has a long history of screwing over its suppliers, which hasn’t really happened to game developers yet, but does engender suspicion.
That said, they ought to be able to build better hardware than Ouya and moneyhats shouldn’t be a problem for them.
Indeed, the only way this makes sense is if this is essentially Roku/AppleTV + Games = AmazonTV.
Leaky, leaky!
From Brazil’s regulatory agency similiar to the US FCC.
Wow that is ugly!
Yeah, looks like hot garbage. We already know that android consoles don’t sell from the Ouya and Shield. Can’t think what value amazon has to add to change that equation.
It’s not entirely clear why Amazon would create a STB for media either. Everybody already supports their streaming video service. They have dang close to 100% market penetration. What is the justification for creating their own STB and competing in that cutthroat zero margin market? The low-end is $35 for streaming sticks, and the high-end $99 for full streaming boxes.
ACME Inc. controller.