A lot of talk has appeared over the past 24 hours regarding Amazon‘s new Kindle Fire HD tablets being ad supported or “subsidized” with special offers appearing on the lockscreen and homescreen, but lets clear some of the rumors up. Since we were there live we can agree that yes these were indeed included, but Amazon has confirmed they’ll be optional.
Once you turn off the screen and then wake it you’re greeted with two sliders. One being unlock the device, while the second one unlocks it directly to an ad of some sort. We managed to unlock directly into the Amazon store to purchase The Hunger Games, and once even saw an ad for Intel. While this isn’t a big deal to me, I know many hate the idea of constantly being pestered to buy something.
There was also the occasional ad on the homescreen too while flipping through the carousel of content on your device. Then during the live presentation on stage they showed us some gameplay that upon dying in game you’re greeted with a continue screen, or head to Amazon.com to buy characters. From here you could actually buy action figurines for the characters in-game which is a neat feature for kids — but we have a feeling we’ll be seeing this appear in other places that aren’t so cute.
According to the folks from Engadget this will indeed be optional however. While Amazon can’t confirm exactly how yet, they’ll allow customer to unsubscribe from ads on their tablet — but probably at a price. That means the $199 Fire HD might cost a few extra dollars to get rid of those pesky ads.
Thoughts?
Lame.
I hope these devices die in a fire
I hope these devices die in a fire