Last year, Amazon introduced the first Amazon Fire TV, combining voice search that actually works, fast and powerful performance, and an open ecosystem to deliver the easiest way to watch Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO NOW, Hulu, WatchESPN, and more on your big-screen TV. Since launch, Fire TV has become the #1 best-selling Amazon device category, with Fire TV Stick quickly becoming Amazon’s fastest-selling product ever. Today, Amazon is making those best-selling products even better. Introducing the next generation of Amazon Fire TV—the new Amazon Fire TV with support for 4K Ultra HD, and the new Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote. The new Amazon Fire TV is available for pre-order today for just $99.99 at www.amazon.com/firetv, and will start shipping on October 5. Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote is available for pre-order today for $49.99 at www.amazon.com/firetvstick, and will start shipping October 22.  Fire TV Stick is also still available for purchase for $39.99 at www.amazon.com/fire-tv-stick.

Amazon Fire TV now has more channels, apps, and games than any other streaming media player, and continues to have the fastest growing selection—now up 17x since the launch in April 2014.  Today, Fire TV has over 3,000 channels apps and games, and customer favorites on Fire TV include Netflix, HBO NOW, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME ANYTIME, HBO GO, Hulu, STARZ PLAY, ENCORE PLAY, YouTube.com, Spotify, Pandora, AT&T U-verse, and Tennis Channel Everywhere. New channels and apps coming soon include FOX NOW, FXNOW, Poker Central, and Turner Classic Movies.

Engage new customers and expand your reach to the living room with Amazon Fire TV.  Submit your app now to make sure it’s available when the new Amazon Fire TV ships on October 5. ^. Let’s take a look at what’s new and what developers should know to get their apps and games ready for the new Fire TV.

The All-New Amazon Fire TV & Fire TV Stick With Voice Remote

The new Fire TV is incredibly powerful for such a small box—it comes packed with a MediaTek 64-bit quad-core processor, a faster GPU, 802.11ac MIMO Wi-Fi, and 8 GB of on-device storage—plus a dedicated microSD card slot for up to 128GB of expandable storage. The new Amazon Fire TV also has full support for surround sound via HDMI to your TV or AV Receiver with enhanced Dolby support for Bluetooth headphones and headphones connected via the new Amazon Fire TV Game Controller.

Amazon today introduced another new member of the Fire TV family, adding a voice remote to Fire TV Stick. Not only is the Fire TV Stick the fastest-selling Amazon device ever, it is also the most powerful streaming media stick available, and the new Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote is the only streaming stick with an included voice remote. The voice remote allows you to simply speak the name of a movie, TV show, actor, director, or genre and get results instantly—plus use the included voice remote on Fire TV Stick to ask Alexa the weather, sports scores, traffic, music, and more. For game developers, the Fire TV stick is perfect for casual games such as Hipster Whale’s incredibly popular game, Crossy Road.

The New Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition

Since launch, Amazon Fire TV has grown its game selection by 500%, now providing the largest selection of games on any streaming media player with over 800 popular games available – plus half of those games are 99 cents or less.

Games available on Fire TV range from console-like games such as Tales from the Borderlands, to popular, award-winning indie games like Shovel Knight, to fun, casual games like Crossy Road. Customer favorite titles include Pac Man 256 and Goat Simulator—plus GameFly Streaming includes popular PC game titles like Lego Marvel Super Heroes and Batman Arkham Asylum.

“Since we launched Amazon Fire TV last year, gaming has been a customer-favorite. Today, we’re excited to expand gaming on Fire TV by providing a new option—Fire TV Gaming Edition—for customers and families who are looking for affordable and high-quality gaming,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President, Amazon Devices. “The team has worked hard to bring software and feature updates that are important to gamers—the new Fire TV has 75% more processing power, expandable microSD storage, 2x GPU performance, and more games than any other streaming media player.”

Now gaming on Fire TV is better than ever with the new Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition, which includes the all-new Fire TV, a new Amazon Fire TV Game Controller, a 32 GB microSD card, and two popular games: Disney’s Ducktales and Shovel Knight—all for just $139.99 (regularly $177.95). The new Amazon Fire TV Game Controller features an all-new ergonomic design, an audio jack for Dolby-enhanced private listening, and instant voice search with a built-in microphone for easy voice search and access to Alexa. Plus, the new Game Controller gives you up to 90 hours of battery life on just one set of double AA batteries without headphones.

We continue to focus on gaming for Amazon Fire TV and our new gaming bundle makes sure that customers get everything they need in one box to play your game. Not only is it easy to port existing Android games over to Fire TV using native or cross platform frameworks but we are working closer than ever with indie game developers to help bring console games over to the Amazon Fire TV.

Android Developers Can Easily Tap into New Segment with Fire OS 5

Now is the perfect time for Android developers to get into the growing streaming device segment with their existing Android app or game. Android developers will find that developing for Amazon 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.

The new Amazon Fire TV ships with Fire OS 5, which is based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and API 22. This is a significant upgrade to the existing Fire OS 3 (API 17) for Fire TV. The key new feature for Fire TV developers in Fire OS 5 is support for Android TV and the v17 Leanback library. If you have an app that supports Android Leanback, those features should work as-is in Fire TV OS 5. This means that it is easy to bring an Android APK to Amazon devices, including Amazon Fire TV. Amazon Fire TV offers Android apps a potentially new set of customers to engage with – all through the same Amazon Appstore.

Bring Your Apps and Games to Amazon Fire TV Today

With the new Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote, as well as our existing user base of Fire TV owners, it’s time to make your new game or app at home in the Amazon Appstore.

Looking for how to get started? Check out the following links:

• Purchase Amazon Fire TV
• Purchase Amazon Fire TV Stick
• Get the Fire OS 5 Developer Preview for Amazon Fire TV
• Fire TV Learning Resources

- Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

Want Amazon Developer blogs delivered to your inbox? Stay in the loop on the latest industry best practices, Amazon promotions, and new launches by subscribing to our weekly blog summary here.