Hi there

The Amazon Fire just came out officially to the world today and its OS is based in Android

is the KGS client for Android available in the Android Amazon Store?
Will it be?
Will it be possible to play in Amazon Fire?

Thanks

Dankenzon

Wms has said that he'll only make an Amazon app store version if there are a lot of Kindle tablets out in the wild--enough to force his hand.

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It's a shame it doesn't support the Android Market.

It's probably worth spending a little more money for a different tablet.

Yes, for me it only makes things harder to support two markets. I don't want to. But if Amazon sells a billion tablets and Android Market doesn't run on them, then I'll support the second market. We'll see how things go; the price of the Amazon tablet is great, so it may sell well enough.

Hi,

I actually think I'd want to buy a Fire just for playing on KGS. But I'm not sure (leaving besides that it's not clear if the client will be on the Amazon Market) if it makes fun at all on a 7" display. Any experiences with other tablets regarding the screen size? Or should I wait for a 10" version?

- Michael

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I'm willing to bet that Amazon will sell boatloads of the Fire, and of the other new models. They're taking a smart approach: they're selling the Fire as a content consumption device. They're building on their strengths as a content distributor, and not trying to make an iPad competitor. It will succeed with the people who don't need or want a full-blown tablet.

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Why not get one of the existing 10" tablets? wms has been developing on an Asus Transformer which looks like a pretty good tablet.

One huge minus for the Kindle Fire (besides the lack of the standard Android Market): All signs point to it being based on Android 2.3. All the tablet optimizations I did require Android 3.0 or later, which means that even if I do add it to the Amazon market, the KGS app will look like a bigger version of the phone client. That is, game chat will be on a popup instead of sitting beside/under the board, the graphical components of the screen will not make good use of the screen space, etc. As I move forward with an Android client, when it makes sense, I'll be doing more tablet optimizations, but none of those will show up on a pre-3.0 device.

It's still over a month before the Fire starts shipping, but if you plan on using it for KGS, I think you should definitely wait. The Fire has a great price point, and I think Amazon has done some great stuff to make it attractive as a product to non-techies (and also make it more attractive to techies!), so it will probably sell well and be a nice product to own, but it isn't like other Android tablets and some things they do well won't be so great on the kindle fire.

Bill,

I would be willing to bet that the Kindle Fire will sell big time, and not just as an alternative to an iPad, but as a supplement to an iPad.

If you were to develop for the Fire I would preorder it in a heart beat. I really want KGS for this tablet.

Now that I have tethering for my iPhone and have given up my 3G contract for the iPad I would see myself leaving the iPad at home and taking the Fire along when I leave the house.

I may buy it anyway, but I really want KGS for it.

Oh please, oh please, oh please.

Terri

What attracts you to it over the other tablets? I'm just curious.

I'm not Terri, but I think it's brilliant the way that you turn it on you see these big buttons labelled "Watch a movie / Read a book / Listen to music / Download an app / etc." It really makes it clear what this tablet is useful for, and makes it easy to do useful things with the tablet, unlike my Transformer which I like quite a lot but made it much less obvious how to do all these useful things (or even that these things were what you do with a tablet.)

The fact that all these "useful things to do" encourage you to spend money at Amazon makes it doubly brilliant. I think it's a great idea and I hope that it is emulated by other Android tablet makers in the future.

Thing is, it's not an Android tablet (what I mean is that it's not marketed as such, and purchaser don't care about Android). Amazon is _very_ smart in de-geeking the (non-iPad) tablet. By ignoring Android, and not telling the user which version it is, they're targeting people who want to use it to consume content, with apps as a secondary usage. They're targeting people who bought Kindles _only_ to read books. These are not the usual tablet consumers, but people more interested in reading in a different way. Whether they can convert these customers to watching movies and listening to music on their tablets is another story - I think that's a slightly different segment, and only overlaps partly with the Kindle-reading demographic.

Apple and Amazon sell tablets for the experience; other companies sell them for specs and Android versions (oh, and Flash). Apple and Amazon will win out, because, while, in the past, these things would only go to geeky early adopters, they are no going to Mr. and Mrs. Average, who couldn't give a hoot about cores, RAM, GHz, or memory card slots.

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Ok, I think this is kind of good news

in an interview with the Director of Project Silk (in-the-cloud webbrowsing system of Kindle Fire) he said very important things for our discussion:

1. we will be able to "root"
2. they will talk with google and don't close the door for accessing their Android Market
3. All point that they won't close the door to "sidedownloading" apps from Markets different than Amazon Market

So, it's likely we will have KGS in the Amazon Fire

We will have to wait a bit to see.

http://theandroidsite.com/2011/09/29/kindle-fire-will-be-a-root-friendly-device-amazon-doesnt-care/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAndroidSite+%28The+Android+Site%29

That's great news and makes a lot of sense. My understanding is that the 30% of the app price that google keeps is split somehow between google, the phone carrier (if any), and the device manufacturer. If Amazon were to add the google market, yes they would get a smaller share, but they would presumably sell more apps, which might make up the difference. I'll hold out hope!

I agree with everything Bill has said about the Fire. It doesn't pretend to be a laptop replacement. It doesn't even WANT to be a laptop replacement. It is clearly a device for consumption of media. The iPad was accused of being a device for consumption, and has gone out of its way to prove that it can produce media as well as consume it.

That being said, I don't like it better than the iPad. But I think a lot of people who don't want to shell out what they consider to be a lot of money for an iPad will LOVE this device.

I got my iPad before I got an iPhone because I was, and still am, a Verizon customer and I was waiting for the iPhone to come to Verizon. For the year that I had the iPad and didn't have an iPhone I used a "dumb" phone and carried my iPad everywhere. It was my connection to the internet and it did everything for me but make phone calls, which is why I carried the five year old "dumb" phone. I had an unlimited 3G plan for the iPad from AT&T, which I kept longer than I should have because I was grandfathered and didn't want to let it go. Now that I have the iPhone I rarely take the iPad out of the house because I can do most of what I can do with the iPad with the iPhone, and now my iPhone is my connection to the internet and I have added tethering so when I do take the iPad out I don't have to find free wifi to use it. And because I have tethering for the iPhone I don't care that the Kindle Fire doesn't have 3G.

I like the fact that the Kindle Fire is a 7 inch tablet. In spite of what Steve Jobs said about 7 inch tablet being "dead on arrival" I believe that this form factor will work for me for the consumption for which the Kindle Fire is designed.

But, I ramble, and let's just cut to the chase... I want KGS. It's as simple as that. And I'll settle for KGS that looks like it does on a phone platform, because some KGS is better than no KGS at all, and that's what I've got now. So any 199 dollar device that could support KGS looks very attractive to me, but it isn't going to replace my iPad... not even close.

I really hate it that I can't play on KGS on my iPad. Sure, I can show up incognito on IGS, but it just isn't the same.

Terri

So based on what you said before would that mean that if they did open the door to goole apps it would be a phone app that would download to the Kindle Fire?

Terri

For books, yes; for some apps, yes. For videos, I'm not so sure. It really depends on what people plan to do with it. I think the majority of early adopters will be Kindle users, who will use it mainly for books. It's also pretty sure that Amazon will release a 10" tablet soon; some in the industry think it will be even before Christmas.

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Considering that I don't have a problem watching movies on my iPhone, I think I will be okay with watching them on on a 7 inch screen.

Terri

I have the Nook Color which has the same 7" form factor and screen resolution as the Amazon Fire. Bought it for e-reading and am very happy with size and usability. It is great for videos as well with a 16:9 ratio. I bought a set of videos on Attacking the Corner from GoCommentary.com and it is very convenient to watch them and a much better experience than watching on my phone. Has Wi-Fi and an okay, but not great, browser, but good enough that I no longer lug my laptop on weekend trips. I will probably by the Fire as well so my wife and I can each have an e-reader. I think the 7" form factor is great - it just needed to be reasonably priced. And of course an SGF reader and a KGS client would be really nice.

Wow, I can't watch videos on a screen that small. I find the iPad to be about the smallest that works for me. (I never had one of those mini-portable-DVD players with a small screen...)

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