The Forge TV, an Android TV box made by Razer, is now no longer available from the Google Store. This could be the first sign of Razer exiting the Android TV market. The Forge TV was announced at CES in January and released in April of this year. The device had decent hardware specs but launched to poor reviews due to buggy software and a lack of Netflix, an app that is still unavailable on the device to this day. Razer is still selling the Forge TV, as is Amazon, but being dropped from the Google Store is not a good sign for the device’s future, nor is it good for Android TV’s future.
According to Android Police, Razer never sent out review units of the Forge TV. They also never released the Razer Turret, one of the Forge TV’s primary accessories, which was shown off with the device at CES. Razer did acquire Ouya earlier this year, so while this might be the begining of the end for the Forge TV, it may not be the last set top box we see from Razer.
The questions is, what, if anything, does this mean for the future of Android TV? The Forge TV is one of only three Android TV boxes on the market. If the Forge TV gets discontinued, and the Nexus Player continues to fill the virtual clearance rack, can Android TV survive solely on the Nvidia Shield and embedded on a few television sets? I certainly hope so at least. Nothing will make a platform like the Fire TV go stale like a lack of competition. At least Apple and Roku seem to be keeping Amazon on their toes.
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I believe it is a mistake selling a box of this type, without at least a cheapy remote. Maybe one like the FTV stick. Can’t add too much to the price. No one is buying this or the Shield for gaming alone.
This box was my absolute worst purchase. The FireTV stick remote works with it. I picked it up because I thought is would compliment my AFTV with google apps and native kodi. I going to put the more adult games on and let my young kids game on the AFTV’s. They promised Cortex streaming from a PC… months later no show. It is the only AndroidTV/Google Cast device that does not support Netflix (cast or Natively). Good grief! I might of well have keep the amlogic box I sold. They haven’t updated anything in months. There is a factory image but no devs are touching this lemon. So no good rom development or non kingoroot root method. At least they have a oem unlock and system image to flash. Also they bought Ouya a while back. Promised big things are coming, nothing so far. I think Razer abandoned the device. BTW the FireTV2 and Forge’s antutu scores are almost identical now.
We all are waiting for comparison reviews of the Hardware of New FireTV2, the Old FireTV1 and others Android TV units, so I appreciate your information!
Since you mentioned that FireTV2 and Forge’s antutu scores are almost identical, I would like to know the antutu values that you got on both units?
I got an overall score of right around 51,000 with the forge being a tad faster. I haven’t run full benchmarks. I run some more test when I get the time.
Goodhur Thanks for your quick reply!
I hope that you could run more test later and posted it here…
Razer are planning on launching Cortex on the Forge TV this month. Cortex will primarily be a separate market place for Ouya games. I suspect Google dropped the Forge TV from their store because of this. ie they didn’t want to sell an Android TV box which also has a separate third party market place.
I once thought the Razer Forge was a great device, then saw the lackluster support, then looked at my Razer sound card, and thought, nope, its a one off device, it’ll lose support within a year. Razer makes ok hardware, but their software support for their “new and unproven” devices is lackluster. This is really no surprise.