Buy from Amazon buy Twitch a billion dollars – Corriere della Sera

VIDEOGAME

Milan , August 26, 2014 – 12:16

     
     
 

That is a relentless drive to Amazon. In all directions. The acceleration in the last few hours looking at the video game industry: the Colossus of Seattle bought Twitch, the site of streaming games to video games, to just under a billion dollars. 970 million, to be precise. She was helplessly watching Google, Yahoo! and as he tried in recent months to win the portal. To understand what Twitch deva such a reputation and economic value must move in the United States, where the use (legal) online video content from biting your ankles time to traditional television. In this context, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, Twitch has come to stand as the fourth largest source of web traffic in the States. The first in that case, it was in February, has been Netflix, the most famous platform of movies and TV shows available online on a subscription basis. Service that Amazon provides with the same Amazon Instant Video. In Italy, for now we have (only) Sky online and Infinity of Mediaset.

I (video) games in the United States are a sight very popular, considering that last October, 32 million people tuned in on the various portals to follow the stream of League championship Legends, attention stronger than that granted to the endings of TV series such as 24 or Breaking In Bed ability to manage a huge amount of traffic that comes to 55 million users in real time is the uniqueness and attractiveness of Twitch in the eyes of giants such as to Jeff Bezos or Larry Page or Erich Schmidt, left empty-handed.

With the new babe Amazon then prepares to act on two fronts: that of video games, in the first instance, and that of video transmission in general. “The games are a very important part of our business,” said Michael Frazzini, vice president of Amazon Games. This is not news. As we reported in June, most of the strategy linked to the set-top-box TV Fire revolves around the playful. And in February, Seattle had put his hands on the study of developers Double Helix Games.

There’s more: the rib of Justin.tv launched in 2011 by Justin Kan and the CEO at the time of signing up with Bezos, Emmett Shear could give a consistent hand in another area where Amazon is starting to venture. Field in which there will be the ultimate challenge with Google: that of online advertising. Twitch has a very defined audience, young male gamers, and is particularly throat to advertisers. For Seattle it will be a good starting point to begin to work its program of placing ads, which when ready will replace its pages to BigG. At stake is a market worth $ 50 billion a year. And the two giants are ready to be, once again, battle.

August 26, 2014 | 24:16

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