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Showing posts tagged with Amazon Fire TV

  • Amazon Appstore Developer Summit London 2015 – Free Video Training

    Mario Viviani

    On November 3rd 2015 300+ attendees, two tracks about monetization and gaming, 13 sessions, multiple guest speakers and the Amazon Appstore evangelists animated a very successful developer-focused conference: the Amazon Appstore Developer Summit 2015, which took place at CodeNode, London.

    The Amazon Appstore Developer Summit focused around unique insights into the Amazon Appstore ecosystem, emerging user interfaces and devices that are driving new user behaviors, like Fire TV and Amazon Echo, and new business models like Amazon Underground and Merch, which are opening up opportunities for customers and the developer community.

    Here you can find the recordings of all the sessions, complete with slides, organized by topic:

    Amazon Apps & Games Services

    An Overview of the Amazon Devices and Services for Mobile Developers - Iain Gavin

    Iain Gavin, Director at Amazon Appstore UK, gives an overview of Amazon's current developer ecosystem. Learn how you can take advantage of Amazon’s Mobile App SDK, Amazon's Appstore and the new line of consumer Fire devices like Alexa, Echo, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick and Fire tablets, as well as monetization services such as in-app purchasing.

    Amazon Fire TV

    Bringing Apps and Games to the Living Room – Jesse Freeman

    In this session, we cover what's needed to bring your Android app or game to Fire TV. We walk you through controller support for a game scenario (buttons and analog sticks), controller support for UI (selection, moving between menu items, invoking the keyboard), and how to account for the form factor (overscan, landscape, device and controller detection). By the end of this session, you’ll be able to understand what you need to do if you want to build or modify your own app to work on a TV.

    Building Curzon Home Cinema for Fire TV - Bill Scott and Philip Mordecai

    How can a cinema chain deliver a big screen experience in a tiny London flat? Curzon, an 80-year old British independent cinema chain and content distribution group with its roots in London, will share their approach. Looking to engage customers outside its theatre locations, they launched Curzon Home Cinema, a virtual venue that offers quality independent cinema in the comfort of the home - all brought to customers where possible simultaneously as their cinema release. Hear from Curzon and the app’s developer, Easel TV, how they built a high quality video experience for customers on Fire TV, the steps to build the app, and the device features they leveraged to create a memorable cinema experience in the lounge. Easel TV will share tips for building your first TV experience, and Curzon will shed light on the marketing strategies they found useful to promote their new experience to customers.

    Amazon Echo & Alexa Skills Kit

    An Introduction to Using the Alexa Skills Kit and AWS to Build Voice Driven Experiences – Paul Cutsinger

    Come learn firsthand how to build for Amazon Echo and Amazon Voice Service enabled devices using the Alexa Skills Kit and Amazon Web Services. This session will walk through using Amazon Echo and how to build your first Alexa Skill using both AWS Lambda and AWS Beanstalk. We'll also take a look at how to monitor your new Alexa Skill using AWS CloudWatch and how to submit it for certification so it's available to customers later this year.

    Alexa, Ask Skyscanner About Flights from London to… - David Low, Skyscanner

    Alexa, Ask Skyscanner about Flights from London to… Skyscanner is a leading global travel search site offering a comprehensive and free flight search service as well as online comparisons for hotels and car hire. Headquartered in Edinburgh, Skyscanner has been in the travel business for over 10 years and has over 40 million unique visitors per month. Skyscanner debuted their first voice experience, built for Amazon Echo, at the Developer Summit.

    Monetization

    Two New Ways to Monetize – Underground and Merch – Paul Cutsinger

    The average developer only monetizes 2-3% of their customers. What if you could monetize 100% of them? In this session you’ll learn about Amazon Underground, where customers get premium apps and in-app items for free and developers get paid for all of the minutes used, and Merch by Amazon, a self-service on-demand T-Shirt printing service that costs you nothing out of pocket.

    Understanding Your Power-Users (and Fostering More) – Peter Heinrich

    A relatively small group—tiny, really—of dedicated customers often generates an unexpectedly large percentage of total revenue for a mobile app or game. Who are the members of this group, and how can you better engage them? More importantly, how do you encourage others to join the ranks of these "power-users”? As an app publisher, Amazon has a unique perspective on power-users in aggregate. Here we offer tips and best practices for cultivating new and existing power-users, keeping them engaged, and maximizing their revenue potential.

    5 Best Practices of Top-Earning Mobile Apps – Mike Hines

    Amazon is famously metrics-driven and obsessed with customer satisfaction. In its role as a mobile app publisher, it is perfectly positioned to analyze and interpret millions of mobile downloads and in-app purchases, leading to some surprising and intriguing insights into mobile app engagement and monetization. Here Amazon presents the results of a cohort analysis designed to identify best practices common among the top 50 revenue-generating apps and games in its Amazon Appstore for Android.

    Gaming

    Responsive Game Design – Jesse Freeman

    Gone are the days where you can make a game and publish it to a single platform expecting a sure fire success. The best way to solve this problem is something I call “responsive game design” based on the same principles that work so well in responsive design for web apps. This framework includes the following key principles: Game graphics and UI support multiple resolutions Game mechanics work across multiple types of input Publish to multiple platforms with the same codebase Saved data is synced across all platforms During this talk we’ll cover how to apply this strategy to your own games enabling them to scale across desktop, mobile, tablet and even TV.

    Picking the Right Tool for the Job: HTML5 vs Unity – Jesse Freeman

    Game developers have lots of options when it comes to picking platforms and frameworks to build their games with. If you are looking to build true cross platform games there are two great options, HTML5 and Unity, but choosing which one to start with can be difficult. In this talk we will discuss the pros and cons of each platform by looking at the same game built in Phaser (http://phaser.io) and Unity. We'll also discuss publishing options for both platforms and how to create truly cross platform games from a single codebase.

    Top 5 Tips for Porting Unity Games to Fire Devices – Jesse Freeman

    In this talk we'll cover the five main tips you'll want to know when porting a Unity game over to Fire TV, Fire Tablet and Fire phone. Through code examples we'll demo how to support multiple resolutions for pixel perfect Orthographic and Perspective Cameras, abstracting player input to support keyboard, controller and touch, as well as optimization tips for C# to get the best performance possible. We'll also show off how to deploy to our devices and incorporate Amazon's own services into your Unity game to help integrate with Fire OS. To help you get started we'll also be sharing all the code examples from the talk. You'll walk away ready to publishing your Unity game to the Amazon Appstore and expand your game's potential user base.

    Marketing and Best Practices

    No Metrics, No Marketing for Digital Start-ups – Edward Relf

    No Metrics, No Marketing for Digital Start-ups” - a lean marketing methodology for disruptive digital start-ups. Edward Relf runs through his framework for building a successful product development & marketing driven approach using real-world examples and lessons from Laundrapp.

    Improving Appstore Rank: Best Practices (& Tactics to Avoid) – Peter Heinrich

    How far would you go to make your app successful? Everyone has a strategy, and as an app publisher, Amazon has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hear the tactics that will get you banned or blacklisted, along with best practices for actually achieving the results you want: more downloads, good reviews, and high monetization.

    Discover More

    For more information about Amazon Appstore, working with the services and devices discussed in the videos, and expanding to additional opportunities, please visit our developer portal.

    To register for a free Amazon developer account, click here.

    -Mario Viviani (@mariuxtheone)

     

  • New: Test Your App's Compatibility with Android 6.0 Marshmallow Using Amazon's App Testing Service (ATS)

    Rena Watanabe

    Our App Testing Service (ATS) allows you to test your app’s compatibility on the Amazon Appstore for Android, Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV.  Today we’ve upgraded our existing Nexus 7 fleet of devices so you can now receive compatibility results for Android 6.0 Marshmallow apps and games.

    Simply drag and drop your Android APK into the App Testing Service and in as little as 90 seconds you can receive a detailed report of potential issues that could affect your apps’ compatibility with the Amazon Appstore – including guidance on how to resolve them before publishing. You can view the test results which will include screenshots, logs, CPU and Memory utilization information from actual devices that we run the automated tests on using Amazon appXplorer. We will also detect and flag crashes during the automated tests that will help you identify potential compatibility issues of your app.

    Most Android Apps Just Work with Fire OS 5

    Have an Android L app? Our Fire OS operating systems is Android-based and powers Fire tablets, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Fire OS 5 is based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop MR1) and API 22 and is more compatible with existing Android apps than ever before. This means that even more of your apps should work on Fire devices with no additional engineering effort. Start testing your app now.

    85% of Android apps submitted to the Amazon Appstore just work. You can find out whether your app has any of the common issues that can block publication on the Amazon Appstore. Our App Testing Service also gives you access to additional test results that show you how your app looks and performs on live devices, now including Nexus 7 devices running the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow.. Start the test here. 

    Start targeting millions of customers on Fire and Android devices. Get started today!

    Test your app and get results in 90 seconds or less

    Register as an Amazon Developer for FREE

    Submit Your Apps to the Amazon Appstore

     

  • Working with 2D Animations in Unity 5

    Jesse Freeman

    Unity 5 has some great tools to help build great 2D games for Amazon Fire TV and Fire tablets. Here are two videos that walk you through how to use Unity’s Sprite Animation tools and also how to set up complex Animation States. I walk through the foundation of setting up Sprite animations and then show you step by step how I link up different states such as walking, running and shooting together so you can control them via C#. Check out the videos here:

    If you are looking to learn more about making 2D games with Unity for Amazon devices or game dev in general make sure to check out my daily Twitch stream from 9am to 12pm EST.

    Publishing to the Amazon Appstore

    If you are a first time game developer or a seasoned pro, the Amazon Appstore is the perfect place for your latest creation. Publishing to the Amazon Appstore is free and easy, especially if you are already building Android games. We offer some great tools and services to help make your game more successful like Amazon IAP, Ads, Merch, Underground and our collection of Fire OS devices. Here are some additional links to help you gets started:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Dev Chat with Zattoo: Designing for Mobile and TV

    Carlos Lievano

    In Dev Chat – Short Answers to Big Questions, our new video series of short videos created by Amazon Appstore, developers of successful apps and games answer your questions in less than 90 seconds.

    In this edition, the team behind Zattoo explains how they approach app design for the living room experience, and how building a native app with a single codebase for both mobile and TV has been advantageous for them. They also discuss how they are using Login with Amazon and Amazon’s in-app purchasing to drive registrations and monetisation. All this has driven their results on Fire devices to surpass their expectations. Zattoo distributes live television and catch up services through the Internet to connected devices. Thanks to its rapid penetration in Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries, it is now the largest Internet TV provider in Europe.

    Related to this growth, Zattoo has developed a design process that starts from their users’ point of view. For instance, they’ve setup a room in which they emulate the real surroundings for a user of their service. To allow for rapid improvement and easier maintenance, they decided to create a native app with a single codebase for mobile and TV. Currently, their app is available on FireTV, FireTV Stick, and Fire tablets.

    In addition to these design decisions, they also integrated Login with Amazon and Amazon’s IAP API. Together, these elements have enabled an experience that’s engaging for their consumers. “What we see with our FireTV app is actually the conversion rate is measurably higher than other platforms, including mobile platforms,” confirmed Jӧrg Schindler, Product Manager at Zattoo.

    The increased conversions has allowed their expectations to be surpassed on all fronts. “We were expecting twenty to 30,000 installs on Amazon Fire devices, and these expectations have been exceeded by far,” said Jӧrg Meyer, Chief Officer Content and Consumer at Zattoo. Not only this, but he adds that their expectations have been clearly exceeded for registrations and subscriptions.

    Check out all Zattoo videos, in which their team discuss what the design process is like at Zattoo, list which the benefits are of working with a native app, share their experience working with Amazon IAP API, and why they decided to publish for FireTV.

    Don’t miss the next edition of Dev Chat. Sign up to the Amazon Appstore blog to stay up to date.

     

  • Building Unity Games for Fire TV: Part 5 – Working with the Camera

    Jesse Freeman

    In part 5 of this multi-part video tutorial series, we’ll go over how to build a simple 2d side scrolling game for the Amazon Fire TV. In the previous videos (part 4) we covered working with input.  In today’s videos we’ll go over working with the camera and making it follow a player.

    All of these videos are recorded from my Twitch game dev channel which you can watch daily from 9:30am – 12pm EST.

    Stay tuned for more videos on building Unity games for Fire TV.

    Looking for more information on Fire TV and publishing to Amazon Appstore? Check out the links below:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Building Unity Games for Fire TV: Part 4 – Working with Input

    Jesse Freeman

    In part 4 of this multi-part video tutorial series, we’ll go over how to build a simple 2d side scrolling game for the Amazon Fire TV. In the previous videos (part 3) we covered working with sprites in Unity new 2D workflow.  In today’s videos we’ll go over working with mouse input and controllers.

    All of these videos are recorded from my Twitch game dev channel which you can watch daily from 9:30am – 12pm EST.

    Stay tuned for more videos on building Unity games for Fire TV. Looking for more information on Fire TV and publishing to Amazon Appstore? Check out the links below:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Leverage Amazon Fling’s Remote Install to Increase Discovery of Fire TV Apps & Games Directly from Mobile Devices

    Jesse Freeman

    In July we announced the new Amazon Fling SDK which allows developers to create engaging second screen experiences by connecting the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick to mobile devices. We continue to add new features to this SDK including the ability to remotely discover Fire TV apps directly from your iOS, Android, and Fire mobile devices by leveraging a new API called Remote Install. Remote Install can detect Fire TVs on the same network as a mobile device and allows developers to prompt the user to launch the Fire TV’s Appstore Product page directly to their app or game.

    To illustrate how Remote Install works, let’s assume you have a game already published in Amazon Appstore for Fire TV as well as on iOS or Android. If you are on the same network as the Fire TV you can have the mobile version of your game automatically prompt the player to install it on the Fire TV. Here was what that would look like.

    If the user accepts your prompt from the mobile device, the game will trigger the Amazon Appstore on the Fire TV to launch your game’s product page so they can finish the installation process. By linking the two version of the game together you can help insure that your Fire TV game is easier to discover by people playing it on other mobile devices.

    How Does It Work?

    At a high level, Remote Install allows you to discover Fire TV devices on the same network. Once a Fire TV is discovered from a user’s mobile device or tablet you can check if your application is installed on that Fire TV and prompt the user to also install the Fire TV version of your app or game. This is important for developers looking to increase the user base of their cross platform apps. By leveraging Remote Discovery’s ability to run on iOS and Android devices, you gain a new way to drive user acquisition for your Fire TV products. Conveniently, you can simply add Remote Install to your existing app or game without the need of fully implementing the rest of the Amazon Fling SDK’s APIs. Let’s take a look at what you need to know for getting it up and running.

    Implementing Remote Install

    There are only a few steps for creating or modifying your controller mobile app to support Remote Install:

    1. Modifying your Android manifest to include network permissions (Android only).
    2. Initializing underlying framework and discovering available players on Fire TV devices.
    3. For a selected Fire TV device, add logic to check if your app is installed on it.
    4. Add UI flow to allow the user to initiate install of your Fire TV app.

    Once your app discovers Fire TV devices running the Remote Install service, your app gets an object that implements the RemoteInstallService interface.  You can then use the RemoteInstallService object to install an app or check the version of an app on the Fire TV device. You can check the version of your app using the getInstalledPackageVersion API. Once your app has called the installByProductId method, the Fire TV will launch the Appstore page associated with the provided ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number).  The user will then need to finish the installation with a Fire TV remote. The need to use the remote to complete the purchase provides the user control of the process. If the ASIN is invalid the Fire TV will show an error popup.

    Get Started Today

    You can read more about how to install and configure Remote Install here. In addition to Remote Install you can also leverage the ability to remotely send the content of your app or game directly to Amazon Fire TV by implementing the full Amazon Fling SDK. To get started, sign up for a free developer account on the Amazon Appstore and check out the following links:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Building Unity Games for Fire TV: Part 3 – Working with Sprites

    Jesse Freeman

    In part three of this multi-part video tutorial series, we’ll go over how to build a simple 2d side scrolling game for the Amazon Fire TV. In the previous videos (part 2) we covered how the inspector works, composition & prefabs. In today’s videos we’ll go over working with sprites in Unity new 2D workflow

    All of these videos are recorded from my Twitch game dev channel which you can watch daily from 9:30am – 12pm EST.

    Up next we’ll look at how to work with mouse input and controllers.

    Looking for more information on Fire TV and publishing to Amazon Appstore? Check out the links below:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Building Unity Games for Fire TV: Part 2 – Working with Scripts and Prefabs

    Jesse Freeman

    In part two of this multi-part video tutorial series, we’ll go over how to build a simple 2d side scrolling game for the Amazon Fire TV. In the previous videos (part 1) we covered the basics of working with C# and scripts in Unity. In today’s videos we’ll go over how the inspector works, composition & prefabs.

    All of these videos are recorded from my Twitch game dev channel which you can watch daily from 9:30am – 12pm EST.

    Up next we’ll look at how to work with Sprites in Unity new 2D workflow.

    Looking for more information on Fire TV and publishing to Amazon Appstore? Check out the links below:

    - Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

     

  • Dev Chat with Curzon: Bringing the Big Screen Cinema Experience Home with Fire TV

    Lauren Stark

    In Dev Chat – Short Answers to Big Questions, our new video series of short videos created by Amazon Appstore, developers of successful apps and games answer your questions in less than 90 seconds.

    From the Big Screen to the Living Room

    In this edition of Dev Chat, Philip Mordecai from Curzon reveals why Amazon Fire TV provided the ideal platform to deliver its premium content into the heart of the living room. Many traditional businesses are launching digital units as they navigate a world where customers are engaging with content in new ways, whether it be online, mobile, or through connected devices in their homes.  Curzon, an 80- year old cinema chain based in the UK is no different.  Since late 2010 the company began operating its video on demand service – Curzon Home Cinema which delivers a highly curated selection of films direct to connected devices. “We tactically chose this route because we believe that consumers want to watch when they want and how they want and that choice should be open in a legal way,” commented Phil Mordecai.

    Sit Back and Relax

    Users of the Curzon Home Cinema app have a choice of over 600 hand-picked movies, delivered when possible on the same day as their box office release.  Given Fire TV has 5x the processing power of the latest generation Roku and 8x the processing power of Chromecast, a MediaTek 64-t Quad-core processor, 8 GB of on-device memory, and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound, Curzon realized customers would value the ability to watch a high resolution film from the comfort of their home, ensuring none of that big screen experience is lost. “The power, the speed and the design of the UI really helped us deliver the quality experience that the Curzon customers expect,” stated Phil Mordecai.

    The ability to mirror Curzon’s physical offering combined with the outstanding sales of Fire TV devices meant that Fire TV was an obvious choice to expand the company’s digital offering, “The number of devices sold and in some cases have been sold out in many locations in the UK, for us has been something to which we have been able to benefit from,” added Phil Mordecai.  

    As part of the process to optimize their app for Fire TV, Curzon integrated the Amazon In-App Purchasing API.  With seamless integration with Amazon’s fast and secure payment system watching a film via the Curzon Home Cinema app via Fire TV is as simple as purchasing a ticket at a cinema. The only thing to worry about is who has bought the popcorn!

    Tapping into a New Even Wider Audience

    There was already an existing overlap between Curzon and Amazon customers, but Phil Mordecai believes that partnering with Amazon also opened new avenues: “Being able to tap into a wider, younger audience through new devices that Amazon are launching through their ecosystem.”

    Make Your Marketing Count

    Successful deployment of the app was not the end of the story, next it was time to generate awareness, installs and sales. Curzon used a number of channels to directly target its existing cinema audience, letting them know that there was a new way to experience its premium content.  Marketing efforts included dedicated trailers before each movie, adverts in foyers and its monthly magazine as well as regular posts on social channels. 

    We’ll leave the last word to Phil Mordecai: “We aim to make cinema memorable again.”

    About Curzon and Curzon Home Cinema

    Curzon Cinema opened its first cinema in London in 1934 and now operates locations across the UK and also is the owner of Curzon Artificial Eye.  As a uniquely vertically integrated content distribution and live event exhibitor group they have been successful in not only pioneering Day and Date, (simultaneous digital release with theatrical), film releases nationwide, but also offering a new highly curated inviting cinema experience that feature both indie films and Hollywood offerings.  In its cinemas, Curzon also offers an inviting experience going beyond watching movies, with lobbies where patrons can sip wine or nibble on a cheese plate.

    Bring Your Apps and Games to Amazon Fire TV Today

    Check out the following links to get started: