[Fire TV General] harlekinrains:
Again - ask Amazon. Also - those updates arent "downloaded" they are part of the initial firmware package and get applied on first boot, after a connected peripheral is found.

As far as gaming on Android and the Fire TV especially is concerned - there definitely is a problem. People buying all kinds of controllers, some of them get disabled via firmwareupdates, and all of them lag quite noticeably. Amazon on the Fire TV 2 is now trying to connect their peripherals via a Wifi adhoc network on channel 12 (2,4 Ghz) called DIRECT-sS-FireTV_**** which is a pretty bad idea all around. It forced me to switch channels on my WiFi router - because using channel 11 on the FIre TV for normal WLAN access became unstable (have to test it more - to be sure, but its currently the most likely scenario).

As far as games compatibility goes - well, it is what it is. You can follow retroarchs development to get a sense of where the problems lie. There is no "proclaimed standard" (= Steam says - this is the box we recommend). There are enormous versioning conflicts - so even talking about one specific chipset doesnt solve your problem - and in the end everything just uses OpenGL ES 2.x and thats it as far as compatibility testing goes. Sometimes projects are trying to focus on the Nvidia Shield for plattform testing because its "the gaming plattform" - but the reality is that it is not what people are buying.

Amazon probably will never will change their approach to source from the cheapest chip vendors out there and everybody LOVES MediaTek because of their documentation, and flawless implementations - not.

So here's the deal. Gaming on Android Set Top Boxes is dead in the water. Amazon tried to put a gamification layer in (that doesnt work in the slightest), then called it a day. They changed their peripherals connection technology from one year to the next (- of course having to support both now, thats fun) - they changed their entire Chip architecture ("family" of GPUs) from one year to the next - and they decided to restrict controller support for third party peripherals randomly - to push up their controller standards. But their controller standards suck (lag and implementation of the adhoc Wifi).

Amazon will always source the cheapest chips possible going forward - they will always try to iterate in 1-2 year cycles - which means there is no platform stability - and game developers simply wont care and put out their products aimed at the lowest common standard.

No one out there is interested in anything but the lowest common standard anymore. Thats the the legacy of the smartphone based app economy. It should sink in once the euphoria of buying another touchscreen device for 600 USD goes away. ;)

In games this often can be found represented by a "resolution" slider, that is unmarked (not to scare away folks, how bad actual gaming performence is on some of those boxes) - but still has to offer 10 steps or more - because, there is all kinds of stuff out there they'd want it to run on.

Making excel compatibility lists that are valid until the next firmware update, game update, or at the best two years tops - is an exercise in frustration. But sillier things have been crowdsourced I guess.. ;)

If it would have been possible to formulate a workable gaming standard ("middle of the road") on Android - all publishers would have jumped on it by now. It isnt.

Gaming always is and always will be an afterthought on those devices. Currently there are too many problems alltogether to call it "viable" - and you have to acknowledge that no one is working on it. Also - there isnt a hardware race that will make sure that some of these problems go away over time - because more cores are useless for gaming, and as soon as the GPU can pump out 4k h265 decoding - the vendors stop to care and it becomes a race to the bottom (Amazon on the Fire TV 2 already went with the cheapest solution, not with a "promising" one - then they told all the bloggers to say that its 75% better).

As far as the DRM schemes are concerned. This one is fun. Ouya is dead as a concept - some vendor bought them for the brand value, we'll see how it goes for them. Open plattforms are your best bet. Right now. The Google Play Store (to an extend), and other Plattforms (Humble Bundle) that sell DRM free. Sticking to a vendors own store ecosystem (Amazon, Ouya (under new ownership) ) is dumb - because compatibility (across generations) isnt a concern for the vendor.

You literally get all negatives without one positive. Well maybe one - the "stock" store always is the easiest to access.

Emulators are interesting - because they can be considered the only "plattforms" at this point. So you know that if one works for you you suddenly get access to a whole game library - that will work.

No one is trying to establish that for current games right now.

---------- Post added at 10:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 AM ----------

Also Amazon of course wont give you back your money easily when it turns out that yet another game they sell on their plattform is unplayable in its current state - so thats fun as well.. ;) But at least you can talk to one of their service reps.. So do it. Dont ask the internet.