Back in April, Amazon unveiled its long-anticipated streaming device Fire TV. While the company has made a number of other hardware announcements since then (including a new phone and new tablet and Kindle device), we we haven’t really heard that much about Fire TV from the company since Gary Busey was being weird in the ad earlier this year.
Today, however, the company has released an update on what’s going on with it. It has added a bunch of apps since launch. Its selection has actually tripled since April with over 600 apps and games now available.
“We continue to hear from customers how much they love the selection available to them on their Amazon Fire TV. In just over six months we’ve tripled the catalog and we’re adding new customer favorites on a weekly basis,” said Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, of Amazon Appstore. “We also hear from customers how much they love playing games on their TV—9 of the top 10 grossing apps on Fire TV are games—so we continue to work with game developers and add the most popular game content. Dungeon Quest, Spoiler Alert, Leo’s Fortune and Ninja Hero Cats, are some of the new games recently launched on Fire TV, and, coming soon, NBA 2K15.”
The most-played gamed, according to the company, are actually: Asphalt 8: Airborne, Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Despicable Me: Minion Rush, Hill Climb Racing, Hungry Shark, Sev Zero, Riptide GP2, Solitaire, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Kindle Fire Edition), and PBA Bowling Challenge.
The most popular media apps and services are Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube.com, Plex, Pandora, WatchESPN, VEVO, iHeartRadio, and Crackle.
Amazon is no doubt looking to sell a lot of units this holiday season, and it’s taking this opportunity to tout “developer success” with Fire TV. It shares a handful of quotes from developers:
“As a small development team, we have had the largest return on our invested capital with Fire TV,” said Todd Daniel, Managing Partner at Shiny Box Games, makers of Dungeon Quest. “We are seeing world class performance metrics only a month in to the game being available on Amazon Fire TV. User retention and attachment rates are higher than any of our other platforms.”
“For us it was really important to be on Fire TV, because of our beyond-mobile strategy,” said Chris Kassulke, CEO and co-founder of HandyGames, creators of Ninja Hero Cats and Save the Puppies. “The end-consumer should have access to their games, whether they are on the go or at home in the living room, and this is the reason why we optimized all our games for Fire TV. As a next step, we will be optimizing all our future games for Fire TV, so the end-consumer can look forward to lots of exciting new content from us.”
“Video content owners have been able to transform their video catalogs into TV apps with the Opera TV Snap technology, and we are excited to publish this video content on Amazon Fire TV – yet another platform to massively increase their audiences,” said Aneesh Rajaram, Senior Vice President for TV & Devices, Opera Software.
Fire TV just went on sale in the UK.
Image via YouTube