Amazon gets into games with Fire TV and Amazon Game Studios

About a year and a half after debuting Fire TV, a set-top-box designed for games and streaming video, Amazon this week announced a new Fire TV and set of bundles including one specifically designed for gaming.

The Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition is a more powerful box that includes more memory, a redesigned controller and two games.

The most interesting company operating in video games right now? From a business perspective, you’d have a hard time finding a better candidate than Amazon.

Here is a hardware platform holder, a game publisher, a network of studios, a retailer of terrifying reach and, through Twitch, a significant media outlet. No company has ever come close to operating in the game business on all these multiple levels.

“We have a somewhat nuanced approach,” Frazzini told Polygon. “There are studios that have hundreds of people working multiple years on a game — that’s not what where we’re going. That’s one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum you have casual games that are really fun to play, like match-3 and puzzles. What we’re thinking about is building games that fall more in the middle.”

In addition to offering the developers the opportunity to work with smaller teams on creative projects, Amazon Game Studios also offered the ability to shape the technology behind the games.

Amazon’s Fire TV is a bold step into the hardware business by a company defined by its ability to deliver content to customers quickly and efficiently. The diminutive device streams movies, music, pictures and even video games to a television.

But it’s not a device designed by the company to go up against video game consoles, which can do much of the same.

Comedy trivia game Fibbage pits up to eight players against one another in an attempt to fool their friends with white lies. Players use their mobile phones or tablets as controllers to answer seven questions per game, including oddball facts and questions about celebrity tweets. Additional DLC is also planned for the title, to be released in the near future. The game follows the original release of You Don’t Know Jack Party last fall, which continues the trivia franchise legacy as a party game.

The Chicago-based developer, previously known as Jellyvision Games, will bring both titles to other platforms based on supportive technology and demand.

Amazon’s dedicated game controller for the just-unveiled Fire TV is available for purchase on Amazon today.

The controller can be used with Amazon Fire TV to play games as well as to browse and play movies, TV shows and music, doubling as a regular remote. The controller also lets users access Amazon’s GameCircle social gaming service via a dedicated button.

A new trailer from Amazon Game Studios, a developer owned by the online retailer, includes a brief look at the company’s in-progress games.

More of their projects, many of which have yet to be officially announced, are viewable in the trailer above.

Sev Zero, Amazon Game Studios’ hybrid tower defense/third-person shooter with a multiplayer component for Amazon tablets, is available for the Fire TV, Amazon’s new set-top box that supports gaming.

The game, which was “built from the ground up for Fire TV” according to Amazon, is available in the Amazon Appstore for $6.99. The story takes place in the early 22nd century, after Earth is threatened by an alien species called the Ne’ahtu, who’ve disabled the planet’s defense grid with a computer virus. Dr. Amy Ramanujan, a “computer prodigy,” disabled the virus and leads the charge to protect Earth when the Ne’athu return.

Amazon revealed its long-rumored set-top box today, the Amazon Fire TV, and the diminutive device — which ships today for $99 — will support games as well as streaming video.

According to Amazon, the Fire TV is designed to outpace competitors like the Apple TV and Roku in performance: The 0.7-inch-thick box features a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Krait 300 CPU, 2 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage, as well as a Qualcomm Adreno 320 GPU, along with a dual-band wireless radio and two antennas for 1080p streaming over 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi.

Killer Instinct developer Double Helix Games has been acquired by Amazon, a spokesperson confirmed to Polygon today.

When reached for comment, Amazon provided Polygon the following statement: “Amazon has acquired Double Helix as part of our ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers.”

Eric Nylund, author of several Halo novels including Halo: The Fall of Reach and former lead on Microsoft Studios’ narrative team, has joined Amazon Game Studios as its new director of narrative design, according to updates to his LinkedIn profile and Facebook.

According to his LinkedIn page, Nylund joined Amazon in July. In a screenshot of his Facebook page, provided by Couch Campus, Nylund showed off his new business card and noted he can’t get into the specifics of his new position just yet.

Air Patriots, the first mobile game from Amazon Game Studios, is available today for iOS and Android, Amazon announced today.

Air Patriots is compatible with Amazon GameCircle on Kindle Fire for achievement and leaderboard tracking, as well as cloud saving through synchronization program Whispersync.

Amazon Game Studios announces its first video game, Living Classics.

Amazon is extending its vast online empire to the business of actually making video games, starting with the newly launched Living Classics, the fledgling studio’s first Facebook game. The announcement of Living Classics, playable right now, is also an announcement of Amazon Game Studios, the online retailer’s foray into game development.