
The Echo is ready for a killer app – 5 ways Amazon can help developers build it - goberoi
https://goberoi.com/five-ways-amazon-can-attract-more-developers-to-the-echo-1cab8e930e83#.m3o5hwh6b
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andrewstuart
I like it that they are facilitating adventure games.

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/05/amazon-echo-audio-
advent...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/05/amazon-echo-audio-adventure-
game-builder/)

I wonder to what extent it would work to create high quality narrated Infocom
style adventure games.

The logical narrator for everything of course being Stephen Fry.

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goberoi
That's interesting indeed, thanks for sharing.

If you're interested in the genre, "Hunt the Yeti" is a new adventure game
that was released a few days ago and seems to be well received based on the
reviews (I have not yet played it).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/4x2jfc/introduc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/4x2jfc/introducing_hunt_the_yeti_a_deductive_reasoning/)

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WalterSear
IMHO, the Alexa skills store is mostly a way for Amazon have other companies
do their product research for them, before they build the features into the
platform themselves.

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goberoi
There are lots of apps that connect to established third parties that Amazon
is likely not to build, e.g., home automation with SmartThings, music with
Pandora. And also several silly but fun things that they may not wish to
maintain, e.g., jeopardy game or the fart app.

But yeah, I don't blame you for being cautious of their intentions. Developers
have been burned in the past on these big platforms (e.g., Twitter [1]), but I
have hope that they will realize the pie is bigger if they make their platform
attractive to 3rd party devs.

[1] [http://nordicapis.com/twitter-10-year-struggle-with-
develope...](http://nordicapis.com/twitter-10-year-struggle-with-developer-
relations/)

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unwiredben
Pandora integration is in the latest Echo versions -- just connect your
account via the Alexa app and ask "play my station on pandora".

I read through their SDK, and music playback isn't really supported. You can
do clips up to 90 seconds, but they have to be encoded at 48kHz and at a
certain bitrate.

