Last to arrive to the streaming party, Fire TV has powerful insides, a controller, and the backing of an in-house game studio. But is that enough to set it apart?When Amazon unveiled its Fire TV streaming-media box Wednesday, it saved the best for last.
After a roll call of the same video-streaming features that Apple TV, Roku, and Chromecast all deliver in varying measures -- and the unveiling of a few unique features like voice search and instantaneous play -- Amazon presented what really sets Fire TV apart from the rest of its class: gaming.
Far from being a peripheral bonus feature, Amazon's game initiative is trying to deliver low-cost casual titles to the people who can't or won't shell out $500 for a console, but crave a bigger gaming experience than their smartphones and tablets provide. The uncertainties, however, are how many of those people actually exist, and whether Amazon's platform will be good enough to make that sell.
With a dedicated $40 game controller and thousands of titles -- some of which are being developed by the company's new in-house studio -- on their way, the online retailer was clear that the one thing it thinks it can deliver that Apple or Roku or Chromecast can't -- yet -- is an Android-centric gaming experience that will grow over time, not stagnate, with some careful nurturing.
"When they got into the gaming stuff, that's really when they started talking about the Fire TV as a differentiator," NPD analyst Ben Arnold told CNET, calling the dedicated controller the clearest evidence of the push. "For me, that says that they are serious about the device being used for gaming and that it's central to its use."
However, Amazon is venturing into territory where others have failed. One-time Kickstarter darling Ouya promised to revolutionize gaming until a lackluster library and poor unit sales pushed it out of the hardware market entirely, effectively killing the dream of a low-cost console-killer. In addition, Amazon is attempting to attract non-gamers to streaming features that are available not only on lower-cost devices like Chromecast, but also higher-end game consoles that may already have a space under the living-room TV.
To that end, Amazon will rely on its aggressive marketing -- a tried-and-true approach from the Kindle unit that takes advantage of the site's home page -- to convince people to buy into its vision of a streaming device that delivers more than you're used to, even if we aren't quite sure where to draw the line between needed and unnecessary.
Fire TV is already leading Amazon's electronics best-seller list, right behind Google's Chromecast. How long it stays will have a lot to do with how Amazon expands the streaming market with games, and just how good those games can possibly get.
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