Amazon’s Echo Buttons, the weird devices that work with at-home trivia games you play with Alexa, are only the start of what could turn out to be a new product line filled with a variety of “connected accessories.” The company is now testing other gadgets of a similar nature with Alexa game developers and plans to launch these sometime in 2018.
“I think you’ll see a lot more games come out this year that take advantage of the buttons,” said Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa, in a conversation this week at CES. He added that consumers may see more types of connected devices, too. “They could be buttons or they could be other form factors,” he said of the rollouts expected this year.
Specifically, this product category is called Alexa Gadgets, and their existence isn’t completely unknown.
As with the Echo itself, the Echo Buttons demonstrate the technology that’s possible – the buttons aren’t standalone devices, but connect with Echo via Bluetooth. But with the newer developer tools, anyone can build their own connected devices, too.
“The model is that we build something, we open it up to developer community, and let them innovate,” Rabuchin said.