I think the interesting thing about it, really, is the fact that Amazon has a huge user-base already participating in their ecosystem. If you have a kindle, buy Kindle books to read on your phone or PC, or even just buy physical goods from Amazon, they already have your payment info and such. From that perspective, the Kindle tablets were already the largest single platform within the larger Android ecosystem. This just expands that ecosystem to your television. It's also pretty much confirmed that amazon is announcing a phone of their own on the 19th, running what one would assume is the same flavor of android running on the kindle/fireTV.

Hardware wise, its not precisely bleeding edge, but there's not really been a compelling reason for what's essentially phone/tablet hardware to play host to AAA-level games -- very few people want that on their phone or tablet, without a controller -- people prefer short-form, pick-up-and-play content there, mostly. There are niche users now, of course, but a mainstream-successful android set-top-box is something new -- something that could host that kind oflong-form AAA content adequately, but which is in its current form, hampered by its roots as a tablet-class device.

The other wild-card is that Sony announced that they would launch the Playstation TV, based on the Vita hardware, in the US and Europe this year. As a gaming platform, PlaystationTV has a slight leg up on hardware specs, a stable of existing games (any Vita title that doesn't rely on touchscreen/camera) -- both long and short-form, the ability to act as a second screen for your PS4, and the just-announced PSN feature of streaming PS3 games over the internet. And that's in addition to doing all the media things that FireTV will do -- it just won't act as another portal into Amazon's marketplace. Including the cost of a FireTV controller, Playstation TV will come in cheaper with a controller and pack-in game to boot.

Its difficult to say how it'll play out.

Seems rather like the Ouya in being an low cost Android-based console with specs similar to phones rather than consoles. But I still think it's a good thing, as competition is good, and Amazon will be able to give it the marketing push it needs.

Consoles seem to be a popular way of getting online TV for older non-smart TVs - doing it at a price that's far lower than competing consoles, and offering more functionality than the basic standalone TV-streaming boxies, seems a good idea (though the likes of Chromecast and Now TV now do this at a much cheaper price, for those who only want the TV side of things).

I bought one to export my game to. My game didn't work on it, which makes the system almost useless.

Wait... What did you expect? If you wrote the engine yourself, you should expect there to be some porting pains. If you're using an engine like Unity and its export feature, you should expect that it's not going to just work without intervention on a brand-new platform.

And that maybe makes it 'disappointing', but not 'useless'.