Report: Amazon's set-top box resembles Chromecast, streams games

Amazon's long-rumored set-top box will take the form of an HDMI dongle like Google's Chromecast, and could stream video games to your TV over the web through a service akin to OnLive, reports TechCrunch.

Citing "multiple sources familiar with the device," TechCrunch reports that the purported device — which is in development at Amazon's Cupertino, Calif.-based Lab126 subsidiary, according to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek last spring — will be a small stick-shaped unit that would plug directly into a TV, not a separate box like a Roku.

Businessweek's original story indicated that Amazon planned to release its device in fall 2013, and made no mention of gaming applications. But according to one TechCrunch source, the dongle could stream "full PC game titles," not the touchscreen-oriented Kindle Fire titles that are currently sold on the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon's game-streaming service would reportedly be similar to OnLive, which streams PC games to a console in the form of a video feed with inputs being provided by the player over the network on a controller. Last week, six photos of an Amazon-branded video game controller were uncovered in a filing on ANATEL, Brazil's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.