Introducing Amazon Game Studios
games.amazon.com
games.amazon.com
Translation: We need more ways to extract money from our customers. People throw bags of money at social game makers, so we'll do that too and add in a blurb about our experience so our customers will think we've really thought this through.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Appstore-Android-Game-App...
As the Kindle book store has taken over, publishers have started actively resisting the store - giving better deals to competing stores, or even leaving the "Amazon network" entirely out of protest. A content distribution network is self-limiting since content producers are scared to death of being stuck with a single de facto monopoly distributor.
Hence why the studios tried to kill Netflix, and damn near succeeded.
If you want to have any hope of becoming the dominating, go-to distributor for all media of a particular sort, you'd have to drag a lot of producers in kicking and screaming - this means absorbing said creators into your fold, and also "incentivizing" dissidents by having so much grade-A content on your network that it cannot be ignored (see: Hollywood's relationship with multiplexes).
This move makes a lot of sense if you consider also that Amazon has tried to open their own movie studio also - they're clearly trying to create AAA-level media as a way to bootstrap their distribution network off the ground and make it harder to ignore/protest against.
Finally: People scoffed at the iPod and iPhone when they came out; it wasn't Apple's business to go into consumer electronics or even telecoms. The Michelin Tires company produces the most widely respected restaurant guide. Clearly, someone should have put a stop to them - they shouldn't have done that.
Much like Bic is the maker for cheap, plastic tools (pens, razors, lighters), I don't see why Amazon can't continue to write software. There is virtually no risk and minimal investment.
This isn't really the same situation at all. Amazon knows nothing about game development, and now has to hire a bunch of new people experienced in game development and focus on getting it right. AWS was already there and a clear benefit to the business before the idea of selling it to users as a service was even on the table.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomeratediscount.asp
Fortunately, the US has laws against this sort of thing, but they can take years of legal hassle to enforce. Meanwhile, loads of competing game makers are shut out of a big store.
Amazon could diversify into plenty of other things where such conflicts of interest are avoided. (AWS is a good example. Nobody was selling a competing service via the Amazon store.)
While a change of direction, I don't think it's an abrupt one. Amazon has been slowly drifting toward creating their own content for a while now.
Amazon is really building an advertising and tracking ecosystem with it's store, it's tablets(and maybe smartphones) and it's tracked browser, it's video service and it's groupon clone and now this social game.
Online direct advertising is great but: Online advertising haven't had much success in brand advertising. having control of a big advertising ecosystem together with complete knowledge of the consumer in store behavior lets you measure the long term connection between a highly targeted ad and in-store behavior later on. Basically solving online brand advertising.
Having such a huge advantage could be a powerful weapon for amazon against brick and mortar stores.
There is money in social games (as far as the PHB can see from zynga). Amazon has an amazing cloud platform that these games can execute from.
I totally understand the move.
also, "social"? either it's multiplayer or it's not.
Quoth Wikipedia:
"Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction."
If you can't loose, and hooking up random input to the game solves it after a while, how can you consider that challenge? Is it really enough to say "we have more content waiting for you, and challenge you to find it by either deliberately or randomly mashing buttons" -- ?
For example, Monkey Island is a great story, and I still adore it; but in the way I would remember and like a movie, not in the way I remember playing Speedball or Empire Deluxe as a kid.
Those enthusiasts you mentioned, do they keep playing these games over and over and over, like a Chess enthusiast would? Is there any measure by which one could say they improved, until they mastered it? I doubt both. So that they're nostalgic about something that they have long sucked dry, just reinforces my point about that not even being a game. I mean yes, skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk is also a game, but come on..