Amazon announced on Monday that the mega online retailer plans to acquire Twitch Interactive, Inc., for a sum of $970 million dollars.
Twitch is the leading platform for live streaming of video game play-throughs for gamers. With over 1 million gamers broadcasting live video game play-through content, Twitch game plays are watched by more than 55 million people worldwide.
It’s an interesting move for Amazon, given its recent acquisitions of game developer Double Helix Games and cloud-based digital comics platform comiXology earlier this year. With its wildly popular Amazon Instant Video service, delivering media content directly into the hands of willing shoppers is nothing new for Amazon.
Is Amazon positioning itself to become it’s own producer of video game content?
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos doesn’t explicitly come out and say that Amazon is launching its own game development company, but combined with recent acquisitions like Double Helix Games and comiXology, it’s not out of the realm of speculation.
“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
“Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”
What do you think Amazon and Bezos have in store for Twitch?
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