Game Developers Eyeballing Kindle Fire

donniebaseball23 writes "Amazon's entry into the tablets market has gone probably even better than they expected. And now the Kindle Fire is quickly becoming a viable games platform. Developers have come out in force to lavish praise on the Fire for its price and ease of use. 'People are fired up about Fire because they know it's part of a service they already use and trust,' said Josh Tsui, president of Robomodo. 'It becomes effortless to buy and use because it does not make them break their usual buying patterns. It enhances it.' Added Igor Pusenjak, president of Lima Sky: 'In many ways, the best thing about Fire is that you barely feel it's an Android device. Amazon built its own closed-system OS on top of Android.'"

Comments

I suppose these are different kindle people?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason a lot of Kindle owners wouldn't buy a Fire is because the e-ink kindle is the greatest thing ever, doesn't really matter if it's rootable or not because if all you want to do is read it's more or less perfect, just load up with gutenberg downloads, no drm leave wifi off and you're set for months. So it probably makes sense people buying a Fire will be interested in games if it's a different market.

Re:I suppose these are different kindle people?

[dasunt]

The reason a lot of Kindle owners wouldn't buy a Fire is because the e-ink kindle is the greatest thing ever, doesn't really matter if it's rootable or not because if all you want to do is read it's more or less perfect, just load up with gutenberg downloads, no drm leave wifi off and you're set for months. So it probably makes sense people buying a Fire will be interested in games if it's a different market.

I just saw my first Kindle Fire today. Nifty. It looks good, it plays videos off youtube with decent quality, and for $200, it's nicely priced. But the display is not optimized for reading books. I'd hate to read books on it for hours on end.

It's a tablet. Even though the price is nice, I don't really need a tablet. I love my Kindle with e-ink. If it broke tomorrow, I'd rush out to buy a new one. But because I love the Kindle with e-ink, I'm not interested in buying a Kindle Fire for reading. The e-ink Kindle is far superior for books. As for everything else, I tend to do too much typing online to want a tablet.

YMMV, but I agree with the parent poster. This is more for the non-reader market.

Sound like it was written by marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody I know talks this way, unless they are in sales or marketing - they just don't.

Re:Sound like it was written by marketing

[Suddenly_Dead]

It sounds like a big long press release.

Despite the low price, however, Kindle Fire hosts a variety of quality games that were ported with little effort, which is a rarity within the Android market. Chalk that up to Amazon’s developer friendly system ...
"From a developer’s point of view, it makes creating an experience much easier, as we don’t have to take into account every single piece of hardware that’s out there, which quickly dilutes how good a product can truly be."

What? Might as well have said

Targeting a single Android device is easier than targeting several.

Since the article doesn't specifically mention anything that makes the Fire more developer-friendly than any other device. The vague claim that it's easier to port to than other devices is dubious, but it's also worded so vaguely that it might mean "porting to the Fire alone vs. porting to every device in existence at once". Would it be any different if the developer was solely targeting the Nook Tablet, or the Transformer? Doesn't the iPad have an even bigger advantage in this respect since it has a relatively enormous userbase?

Multiply that vague claim several times, add in a general description of the device ("[a] tablet you can take anywhere that stores books, games, videos and other kinds of media"), some praise ("We can't wait for the Kindle Fire 2"), and you've got the article. I totally expected a disclaimer at the bottom about it being paid-for.

Re:Sound like it was written by marketing

[hort_wort]

Agreed, I'm definitely not believing a word of it. Every other thing I've heard about the Fire has been negative thus far. In fact, the linked article doesn't even sound as hyped up as the summary:

“Kindle Fire has great potential if Amazon improves its performance and irons out a few of the current bugs, which I'm sure they will,” added Pusenjak. “It's not exactly a prediction to say that Fire will become thinner, less expensive and more powerful over time.”

So even the game developers are saying they're not gonna touch it unless it's fixed.

Re:Sound like it was written by marketing

[SlapChop]

Yeah, "Developers have come out in force", for what 3 developers? That's a gross generalization. That being said, I have KF and it's got an amazingly bright screen that is great for games.

My app has sold after release of the Fire

[Jaxim]

Before the release of the Kindle Fire, my boggle app "Word ZigZag" (http://goo.gl/OFT0o) had been up on Amazon's appstore and sold hardly anything. But as soon as the Amazon Kindle Fire was released, I sold a whole bunch.

So I agree that app developers are probably now considering the Amazon Appstore.

Year of the android!

[larry bagina]

the best thing about Fire is that you barely feel it's an Android device.

Fired up!!!

[Dan East]

Yeah, we're fired up too! We sent our totally unmodified, stock game exactly as distributed in Google Marketplace, to Amazon for approval, and it went right through in about a week! Amazing!

On a serious note, the main issue developers would have supporting the Kindle Fire is the lack of the Back and Menu buttons. However, our game was originally developed for iOS, thus we already had that functionality onscreen (the hardware buttons are essentially redundant).

Funny, all the mobile app develpers I have ever...

[Assmasher]

...spoken to about the device say "Sorry, I won't publish through Amazon's App Store because it is sh**."

The same reason I hope the Fire fails absolutely miserably; whereas, if you could use Google Market with it I would buy one immediately.

Amazon are climbing on Google's back to create another closed system.

Say what?

[PopeRatzo]

the best thing about Fire is that you barely feel it's an Android device. Amazon built its own closed-system OS on top of Android

Whoa, that's a goodthing?

Remind me never to buy any of that guy's games.

My brother-in-law bought a Kindle Fire, and it's really disappointing. It's flimsy and designed to be little more than a shopping tool for Amazon. They should give them away for free.

I don't see why this developer guy, this "Igor Pusenjak, president of Lima Sky" thinks that there's something about the Kindle Fire that makes it an attractive game platform. It's an android tablet, not a very good one, and there's an Amazon skin on top of it. Why would that be a better game platform than another android tablet? Is there something about the Amazon skin that makes it better? Is there something about the lack of an SD slot that makes it better?

And the last update for the Fire made it impossible to root, so it's not even useful as an inexpensive android platform (I hear B&N did the same with the Nook tablet).

This story smells fishy. There's some other agenda going on here.

not an android device? hardly...

[eratosthene]

Posting this on my Fire. It is most certainly an android device. In fact, the *only* differences I can discern between it and my cyanogenmod phone (as far as User Experience goes) are the custom launcher and lack of android market. After rooting and installing a regular launcher and the market, it works exactly like you'd expect an android tablet to work. Are people really so shallow that they think the launcher and skin define a whole different OS?

Re:Other way around...

[SuperKendall]

The summary may have been astroturfing (I agree it sounded overly "marketeese".

But I am a professional iOS developer, and I am just telling you what I see and hear. The Fire is the first Android tablet I have seen people who were otherwise dedicated iOS developers think "hmm, perhaps I could make something for that". A client I am currently working for is doing an Android solution for part of the project that specifically targets the Fire.

It is really tempting to use treat the Fire as a totally one-off platform and build something for it, if for no other reason than you know Amazon is going to market the hell out of it - and they, unlike so many other companies, know how to market (AND have a base of customers that really like Amazon as a company).

That's not Astroturfing. That is common sense. That is why the Fire is gaining traction, because the thing is being marketed not as an Android device but as an Amazon device.