In an era where there is a flood of (mostly Android powered) microconsoles in the market, Google have decided to take matters into their own hands, and announced their official entry into the living room gaming market, with their brand new Nexus Player, an Asus built Android powered gaming consoles that plays games and movies.
The thing with the Nexus Player is, unlike all other (spectacularly failed) microconsoles on the market so far, it has two things going for it- Google’s full backing, and the fact that its hardware is not ARM based, it is x86. That is huge. The leading consoles of today, as well as all PCs and Macs, all use x86 architecture, so it could potentially have some great game content in the future.
It’s got 1GB of RAM, a custom quad core 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor, and a TV based variant of Android called Android TV. Emphasis is also placed on the media capabilities of the box, meaning this thing is not just competing with the Ouya, Fire TV, or PlayStation TV, but also with Roku, Apple TV, and Google’s own Chromecast.
It starts out at $99, with a full fledged dual analog controller available separately for $40. It launches in the US this November.