Today, Amazon announced the availability of Amazon Fire TV in the UK and Germany. Amazon Fire TV is the best-selling streaming box on Amazon in the US since it launched in April, and makes it easy for users to stream movies, TV shows, and music as well as download apps and play games right on the HDTVs they already own.

For developers, Fire TV can help you increase your customer base by putting your app in the living room, in front of people who enjoy entertainment and may not have seen your apps before. With this expansion to customers in the UK and Germany, you’ll be able to reach even more customers on Fire TV. To promote rich user experiences, Fire TV enables full-featured game controllers, Dolby Digital Plus Certified surround sound and more. Android developers will find that developing for Fire TV is familiar, and optimizing their apps for the new controllers and TV display will not require learning a new language or new frameworks.

Fire TV is currently available in the US and retails for $99. Fire TV will ship on September 25, 2014 in Germany (€99) and October 23, 2014 in the UK (£79).

Here are some resources that we’ve published to help you get started with Amazon Fire TV.

Getting Started with Fire TV

• Amazon Fire TV Overview: Put Your Apps and Games on More Screens: A video overview of Amazon Fire TV and the opportunity that it brings for game developers. (May 29, 2014).
• Tips for Getting Your Android Apps Looking Good on Amazon Fire TV: Looking to get your Amazon App or Game on the new Amazon Fire TV?  We showed you how to get started and covered the top things you will need to know to be successful on TV. This included understanding Amazon Fire TV video outputs, updated Android layouts, TV overscan and colors, navigation, notifications and handling web content (April 17, 2014).
• ADB Debugging: How to Test Your Android APK on Fire TV. We released a video that walks through ADB debugging on Amazon Fire TV (May 29, 2014).

Game Development for Fire TV

• Building Responsive Game Design: Making Games That Scale across Desktop, Mobile and TV: We talked about responsive game design and what you can do to have your game run across multiple platforms and form factors like Tablets, Phones and now Amazon Fire TV (April 30, 2014).
• Building for the next Generation of Gamers with Fire TV: We covered how the Amazon Fire TV now offers you access to an entirely new generation of kids growing up as gamers. While traditional console game development is still out of reach for most, the Fire TV enables developers to target the casual gaming audience right now. It’s also an opportunity to be one of the first TV-based games that kids play (April 22, 2014)
• 10 Tips for Remote and Controller: We shared 10 Tips for adding remote and game controller support to your Amazon Fire TV games. One of the most exciting prospects of publishing your game on Amazon Fire TV is that you can run Android games directly on the TV. If you are already building games for Android, you can use the same codebase you currently have, and make that game playable on Amazon Fire TV (April 10, 2014).

In addition to the resources I’ve included above, be sure to check out these additional resources:

Purchase an Amazon Fire TV in the US, UK or Germany

Amazon Fire TV SDK Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon Fire TV SDK

Device Specifications

Display and Layout

User Interface

Design and User Experience Guidelines

Android Developer Multiple Screen Guidance

Supporting Different Screen Sizes

Supporting Different Densities