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Is Amazon Making a Sub-$300 Console To Play Mobile Games?
itwbennett writes "Yesterday, a story suggesting that Amazon was planning to launch a sub-$300 Android game console made the rounds. A $300 box to play mobile games on your TV? ITworld's Peter Smith doesn't buy it. 'If Amazon is working on some kind of set-top box, it's going to be about streaming,' says Smith. 'Music, video, and games. Remember back in November when Amazon announced G2, a new AWS instance type designed for streaming GPU intensive tasks like games? Combine Amazon's G2 cloud servers and an Amazon set top box for console-like game streaming, plus supporting Android and/or iOS games (possibly the latter would also be streamed), and of course support for Amazon Video and MP3, and we're getting closer to something that may be worth $300.'"
A $50 Roku or $60 Blue Ray player can already stream Amazon content fine. Heck, even a Kindle Fire has a micro-HDMI cable.
$300 for an Android game console would be nuts, but it would actually make a lot more sense than a $300 streaming device.
$100 for an Amazon version of the Ouya would be kind of cool.
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Between the state of CPUs you can buy and the presence of a massive supply of used and new-old-stock last gen consoles, $300 seems like about the weirdest place to postulate an unconventional console launch.
Once you cut the expensive multitouch IPS panel and battery out of the equation, you'd be hard pressed to spend $300 on a 'mobile' derived system. The SoCs just don't cost that much, and they are extremely heavily integrated because they are supposed to go in phones and tablets and things. Something like the Ouya, and the absurd number of more or less anonymous Android HDMI sticks from the pacific rim cut things a little close to come in under $100; but an extra $50-$100 still leaves you at or below $200, and gives you a great deal of room for improvement. At the same time, $300 is a hard target to hit with 'full PC' derived systems, unless they've had several generations of cost reduction (as we can see from MS and Sony and how long it took them to break even at that price point, after they eventually cut down to it). It's just an odd number.
If Amazon wants a 'Kindle Couch', $300 is silly high, given the very very strong odds that it would be a screenless or screen-reduced variant on a relatively cheap mobile design. If the rumor alleges that Amazon is gunning for the AAA console space, months after the two main players and the hapless runner up have already played, that just strains credulity.
Is /. making every story headline a question?
If so the answer to these questions will always be no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
A console for Android games?? What a clever and original idea!
I said, before the Ouya was released that it would not be a smashing success, but it will be a success and well it was. A minor success.
I also said it would pave the way for future consoles based on the same idea making the Ouya a version 1.0 type of product and for a version 1.0 the Ouya did pretty well.
The majority of console buyers don't want a PC wannabe console because they're not PC gamers. They want a simple box they can turn on and play simple games on, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Xbox 1 or PS4 dont fill this market and the Wii U has been pretty underwhelming. So if Amazon can pull of a decent console (like they did with their ereader) then they could own the market in the same way the Wii did.
In fact, I'd be quite surprised if Amazon is the only company going to try this.
Between this and Steamboxen, the Playstation and Xbox will need to change radically to avoid fading into oblivion, both the casual and hardcore gamer will soon have better options and there are not enough hardened fanboys in either camp to sustain them.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I feel like I'm reliving the 80s, where every electronics manufacturer on the planet seemed to come out with a Z80-based console to take the market by storm.
Yes.
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