The original Fire TV was released nearly a year and a half ago and was Amazon's venture into the set-top box market. At the time, it was intended to counter the likes of Apple with their Apple TV and Roku with their Roku 3. All of these devices are capable of streaming video through applications like Netflix and YouTube, but Amazon also had the added benefit of streaming from their own Amazon Prime library. Gaming was also possible on the original Amazon Fire TV, but Amazon never shipped the device with an actual controller. Because of this, playing games was never an enjoyable experience since the users had to use the clunky remote. A separate controller was released, but many users didn't like how it was so clunky and difficult to use. This doesn't seem to be a problem with this new release, because Amazon has taken user feedback into consideration and are now releasing an actual wireless controller. The controller itself is supposed to be very ergonomic and feel very natural in the hand. It has a built in 3.5mm headphone jack and a microphone for easy access to the new Alexa-based voice search, which can also be found in the Amazon Echo speaker.
The device itself features a 2GHz quad-core processor, a dedicated GPU and 2GB of RAM. The device will also ship with a 32GB microSD along with the 8GB of internal memory, which was already present in the older model. It has built in WiFi capabilities, much like any other set-top box. It will be capable of outputting video at up to 4K at 30 FPS, and 1080p or 720p at 60FPS. The games library apparently features over 800 titles including Minecraft - Pocket Edition, Pac-man 256, Lego Star Wars and many more. The majority of the games available can also be found on other mobile devices.
The Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition is available preorder through Amazon with an expected release on October 5th. It will be available to purchase for $139.99 and will come with the controller and two games, Shovel Knight and DuckTales: Remastered. What do you think? Are you going to be picking up this newer version of the Fire TV? Leave your thoughts below!
Source
Source
Source
Source
