Amazon sets up studio to devote itself to video games to compete in the 100 billion game market

Amazon has been increasing its recruitment efforts recently, constantly seeking senior talents in the video game industry from companies such as Sony and Electronic Arts to help Amazon Game Studios develop games. Currently, Amazon Game Studio has placed more than 100 positions on the Amazon Jobs website to recruit talents.

. With the vigorous development of video games, traditional e-commerce giant Amazon does not want to miss the infinite opportunities brought by this industry and has begun to devote itself to this business.

Amazon announced on the company's Amazon Jobs site that it is "fully committed to video games."

In fact, Amazon has been increasing its recruitment efforts recently, constantly tapping senior talent in the video game industry from companies such as Sony and Electronic Arts to help Amazon Game Studios develop games. Currently, Amazon Game Studio has placed more than 100 positions on the Amazon Jobs website to recruit talents.

For Amazon, the Internet giant, building video games is more than just about getting a piece of the $100 billion video game industry. In fact, Amazon is still trying to win over game developers who need cloud storage to connect online multi-role game players. To this end, Amazon acquired game streaming site Twitch in 2014, a move that could give Amazon a huge competitive advantage.

Video games attract widespread user participation

As explained on the Amazon Jobs website, Amazon Games Studio believes that "games are becoming the largest form of entertainment on the planet."

In terms of performance, users do spend a long time on video games. Data shows that throughout 2016, more U.S. users spent time on mobile games, much more time than on streaming video services provided by companies such as Netflix and Hulu. Meanwhile, in 2016, players spent approximately 43 billion hours on Activision Blizzard's games, which is comparable to the more than 45 billion hours spent by Netflix users.

In

order to seize this market opportunity, Amazon Games Studio has also created its own free game platform called "Amazon Lumberyard". The platform allows professional game designers to build games using built-in integration programs, which can then be delivered live to players on Twitch, and can also be integrated with cloud hosting services configured with Amazon AWS services. Amazon Game Studio has also been developing games that leverage the Lumberyard platform as a way to showcase the powerful set of tools Amazon can provide to game developers, especially those who increasingly design games for a wide range of e-sports game players.

The combination of the Lumberyard platform and AWS will be very attractive to game developers because this combination will give new games a powerful ability to attract a large number of newcomers. In addition, this combination allows game developers to save more time and money, thereby helping them devote more resources to creating high-quality content rather than spending a lot of valuable time on infrastructure.

Amazon's push for its own video game business is also very consistent with the company's overall customer-centered strategy. Amazon has been investing heavily in content to provide free streaming movies and TV series and other services to members of its Prime service. Of course, it would make sense for Amazon to invest heavily in video game services, as the company believes the gaming industry will become the most extensive form of entertainment in the world.

Amazon has begun to integrate Twitch features to provide more premium services to Amazon Prime members. In September 2016, Amazon launched Twitch Prime, a premium service for Twitch users, but it can also be used as a free feature for Amazon Prime members. Prime members can now also view ad-free streaming content on Twitch, and can also download free game content, including the more popular mobile game, Activision Blizzard's Hearthstone game content.

Growing facts from Twitch and e-sports

show that in 2014, Amazon spent a huge US$970 million to acquire Twitch, not just acquiring a popular gaming website used to publish advertising to generate revenue. In fact, Twitch also brings a significant competitive advantage to Amazon's AWS business, as cloud storage demand continues to soar as e-sports and mobile games grow and grow.

Twitch is indeed a positive factor for the growing popularity of electronic sports. Industry analyst firm Newzoo believes that in 2017, the global users of the e-sports industry are expected to reach 385 million, and this figure will continue to soar. It is expected that by 2020, nearly 500 million users will participate in the e-sports industry, who may be direct participants or spectators. Twitch has more than 100 million users, of which approximately 10 million are daily active users, and the game streaming site also broadcasts live electronic sports events.

In recent years, the high popularity of online multi-role games such as Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty and Riot Games's League of Legends has driven the development of electronic sports. As more and more game players participate in online competitive games, these players are also beginning to need more cloud storage services, which are precisely the services that game developers rely on to connect online game players to survive.

Today, Twitch has become an important asset for Amazon, especially as the e-sports market continues to grow. Amazon Game Studio said,"Exposure to large-scale computing and communications has also triggered growth in size among different groups such as players, broadcasters, viewers, fans, and game developers. Within Amazon Game Studios, our studios in Seattle and Irvine are developing large-scale multi-role PC games, which will leverage the power of AWS and Twitch to create gaming experiences for new user groups."

Overall, Twitch, Lumberyard, AWS and Amazon Game Studios have all given Amazon a good start in building a game ecosystem, and it is also a series of innovative initiatives by Amazon.

The video game industry is booming.

The industry expects that the video game industry is a huge market. It is expected that by 2021, the revenue of this market will increase from the current approximately US$100 billion to US$132 billion, and one of the major growth drivers will be mobile games. In 2016 alone, this market worth approximately US$40 billion grew by as much as 18%.

The gaming industry is in fierce competition with almost all major entertainment industries, which is an important reason why companies such as Activision Blizzard are willing to compare the time players spend on games with the time users spend on video streaming services and social media every quarter.

In the future, mobile games, e-sports, virtual reality and cloud games will become important growth drivers in the game industry. Amazon will also rely on Twitch and AWS to compete in this increasingly booming industry.

As the rugged video game ecosystem becomes increasingly integrated, Amazon also has the opportunity to become the habitat of choice for game developers around the world.

Editor: Nancy