Whoopee — yet another boring Android game box for the living room

Amazon’s long-awaited announcement of its Fire TV set-top box enters a crowded field of Android game consoles in the living room.

For sure, Amazon has a much better chance of disrupting the multibillion dollar home console industry on the TV than any of the other so-called microconsoles. But it is entering a field that has received a tepid consumer response so far.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.