Amazon’s Fire Stick Is a Challenge to Google and a Threat to Roku

Amazon recently launched the Fire TV Stick, a streaming media dongle that closely resembles Google’s Chromecast. The device offers the same media streaming and game-playing abilities as Amazon’s Fire TV set-top box, and costs $39, compared to the $99 Fire TV and $35 Chromecast.

Launching a cheap media stick certainly makes sense given the rising popularity of Chromecast, Roku, and Apple TV, but is it too late to enter this saturated market?

Releasing just a week before Black Friday, the Amazon Fire TV Stick is available for pre-order right now for $39. Amazon hasn’t announced global availability, but we’ve reached out and will update with new information as it comes. As a special perk for current Amazon Prime subscribers, you can pre-order the Fire TV Stick for a cool $20 for the next two days.

While similar to Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick, the Amazon Fire TV Stick tries to set itself apart in a few ways. It is compatibility with the Amazon Fire TV game controller is nice, opening up a selection of over 200 games to download. Of course, that requires the $40 standalone cost of the controller.firetv-stick

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