Amazon could take on the PS4, Xbox One, and Apple TV all at once with its own game console

• By Grant Brunner on February 11, 2014 at 10:45 am
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  • • Hot off the heels of the Xbox One and PS4 launches, Amazon is rumored to be releasing its first console later this year, and it will likely sell for under $300. With an incredibly low entry price, an existing content ecosystem, and a recent high-profile developer acquisition, Amazon is primed to take on Microsoft and Sony head-on.
      Recently, VG24/7 revealed a number of juicy details regarding Amazon’s new console. With an Android-derived OS, this machine will be able to run existing mobile games. In fact,Amazon is reportedly demoing the console using existing mobile titles. That’s a nice parlor trick, but that’s certainly not where Amazon is headed. We’ve already seen the Ouyas of the world fail to gain traction, so it seems highly unlikely that Amazon will market this console as the ultimate Candy Crush platform.
      An affordable set-top box from Amazon would also offer an opportunity to compete directly with the Apple TV and Roku. Amazon has millions of existing customers, and offering a tightly integrated experience could potentially perform quite well. Amazon already has a huge content library, so it’d be wise to leverage that in the living room. As the company continues to expand into hardware, this is definitely the next logical step — with or without games in the mix. It is easy to imagine AirPlay-like functionality, between Kindle Fire tablets and an Amazon set-top box.
      Okay, it’s an Android-based machine that will probably stream Amazon Prime videos really well. What about actual games, though? Well, it seems as if Amazon isn’t content with just a handful of mobile ports. Last week, Amazon announced that it has acquired Double Helix — the developers of last year’s Killer Instinct on Xbox One. With that purchase alone, this machine becomes much more interesting from a gamer’s perspective.
      It’d be very easy for Amazon to launch this console with nothing but half-hearted ports ofAngry Birds, Cut the Rope, and a mountain of Flappy Bird clones. Thankfully, it seems as if the Seattle company has much larger ambitions. If Amazon can offer a reasonably powerful console with top-notch dev tools, it doesn’t matter if it’s running Android under the hood. With a low price, and strong developer support, this could potentially be a viable competitor to the PS4 and Xbox One. Of course, it remains to be seen if Amazon can actually pull any of that off.
      At this stage, there’s no reason to get hung up on the stigma of Android gaming. Think of the Android roots of this potential platform as little more than an implementation detail. After all, the PS4 runs a variant of BSD, and nobody bats and eyelid. We still don’t know much about what Jeff Bezos has up his sleeve for 2014, but don’t count it out simply because of the word “Android.” Let’s actually see what Amazon and Double Helix can deliver as a team before we dismiss this new console outright — it’s not any crazier than Microsoft’s original Xbox was a decade ago.