Will Amazon's Console Be a PC Game Streaming HDMI Stick?

A post on TechCrunch today adds fuel to the Amazon console fire, citing sources who say that the console will be a Chromecast-style HDMI dongle, and that it will even stream PC games over the Internet.

According to the post, an unnamed source says that Amazon’s console “should have support for streaming full PC game titles,” akin to the kind of video game streaming that was tried by OnLive and Gaikai—before the former went belly up and the latter was acquired by Sony for its PlayStation Now service. The report also claims that the streaming will come from Amazon’s servers at 30 frames-per-second, which, if accurate, would be pretty damn decent for most modern games.

And streaming PC games? That’s something we speculated might be included in the new and somewhat more expensive price for Amazon Prime services when that was announced last week. And with this news, its acquisition of Double Helix games back in early February is starting to make more sense. All along, it seemed that Amazon was making a mere Android console like the underwhelming Ouya. Instead, it’s going to be an Ouya crossed with an OnLive console, crossed yet again with a Chromecast dongle.

So as March inches ever closer to its final day, the hype surrounding the fabled but still unconfirmed Amazon TV console continues to mount. Last month, news floated that Amazon would announce and release its Android-powered console sometime in March, and since then the rumors have continued, not to mention a glimpse at what seems very much like an Amazon-branded, Android-based game controller. A beefy game pad like that seems like it wouldn’t be cheap, but the idea that it might be bundled with a dongle-sized HDMI stick seems like it could all make more sense as a package deal.

Back in January, we’d heard that the console prototype was roughly the same size as the redesigned PSOne, and would cost under $300. If today’s reports are true, it would seem that Amazon’s shrunk things down considerably. Let’s hope they do the same thing to the price tag. Though, I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind paying about $295 for a media streaming box that also streams top PC games…if it all works well, that is. Stay tuned.

[Source: TechCrunch]