Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
Amazon wants to own all your screens. That’s why it sells Kindle tablets, the Fire phone, and the Fire TV set top box. And it’s why the company just inked a nearly $1 billion deal to Twitch, a company that lets people broadcast their videogame play over the net.
As random as the Twitch buy may sound to the uninitiated, it makes at least as much sense—and probably a lot more—than Amazon building and selling its own phone. Apple and Google have already won the battle for the small screen. The same can be said for tablets, with the exception of the Kindle for e-reading. But the screen that gamers use—the original TV—is still contested territory. The battle for the living room is very much up for grabs. And that’s where Twitch comes in.
In recent months, games have become an increasingly important part of Amazon’s business. Beyond selling game titles on its site, Amazon has been staffing up its own game studio with A-list talent, and its Fire TV doubles as a game console. If Amazon then beefs up its roster with the world’s top site for watching other people play videogames, it can become a formidable force in the gaming world.
Commanding Attention
Why does that matter to Amazon? As non-gamers must be constantly reminded, the gaming industry is bigger than Hollywood. Fans of games are often more passionately engaged than the biggest devotees of movies and TV, and they may well spend even more time sitting in front of the big screen. Twitch gives Amazon the power to command their attention even when they’re not playing games themselves.
Apparently, Google saw the same opportunity. The deal with Amazon comes after what seemed to be a lengthy courtship between Twitch and Google, which is battling Amazon on every front to own a greater share of the world’s screen time. But there are a few differences here. Google’s play for Twitch would seem to have been an attempt to expand its ad business into yet another platform. For Amazon, the rationale is a little more complicated.
A Natural Fit
Amazon does have an ad business, but it’s a small sideline compared to its main role as a retailer. Recently, shareholders have punished the company amid claims that it’s not focusing enough on this core function. It’s hard to imagine that $970 million spent on game broadcasting will assuage that concern. But a captive audience is a great way to build a constituency of potential customers. However Amazon plans to leverage that attention, you have to own that attention first. And if you doubt the port of game-play videos to do that, you’ve never watched a little kid discover Minecraft clips on YouTube.
Twitch has built an audience of 55 million viewers at last count, viewers who have turned top gamers into celebrities and video-game spectating into big business. And its reach is global. Owning Twitch puts Amazon in the living rooms of young people around the world, extending the reach it already enjoys through it’s Prime Instant Video.
Amazon may be far behind on mobile devices beyond the e-reader, but buying Twitch shows it’s not willing to cede the screen that fits most naturally with its original business of selling media. Games are another way Amazon can cement its place in the living room before Google or Apple find a way to dominate the big screen too.
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