It has been announced that Twitch.tv has been officially acquired by Amazon today for $970 million. This news comes via an open letter to the community from the Twitch.tv CEO, Emmett Shear.
Despite being bought out the Twitch CEO promises they wont lose their identity saying “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.”
“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 – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com in a press release regarding the acquisition. “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”
This news is somewhat surprising consider only three months ago it was reported that Google was to be buying Twitch for $1 billion. At that time it was believed to be mostly a done deal. Sources that were familiar with the deal between Google and Twitch said that they were unable to make a deal due to concern over potential antitrust issues that could come into play with the acquisition.
Twitch has made quite a name for itself in the gaming community these last couple years with 55 million unique monthly users, and 7 million people logging into the website each day. It comes as no surprise that Amazon would want to jump on board and have their own streaming service to rival some of the best.
So what do you think? is Amazon the right company to take over Twitch rather than Google? let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
