Online shopping giant Amazon has moved into the game streaming business with the $970m acquisition of video-game streaming service Twitch.
Founded in 2011, Twitch which gets over 55 million unique monthly viewer and was formerly known as Twitch.tv – allows users to watch other people play video games.
Earlier in the year, Google’s YouTube had been reported to be in late-stage acquisition talks for a similar amount.
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| Watching Twitch TV live. |
“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,” said Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos in a statement.
“We look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community,” he added.
The move is seen by many analysts as helping Amazon in its quest to beat other streaming video sites like YouTube and Netflix and a ramping up of the “Streaming Wars”.
The CEO of Twitch, Emmett Shear, has posted a letter on the Company’s blog.
Part of the the letter states:
“Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon. We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.”
