Founded in 2011, Twitch, formerly known as Twitch.tv, allows users to watch other people play video games. As of July of this year, the service had over 55 million unique monthly viewers.
"Broadcasting and watching game play 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. Twitch allows users to broadcast snippets of their game play and its services are built into gaming platforms like Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One.
Amazon currently offers Prime subscribers access to streaming television and movies on its site, and has recently begun commissioning original programming - following in the footsteps of Netflix, which found success with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Twitch adds a cadre of committed gamers to Amazon's potential audience. The all-cash deal is one of the company's biggest acquisitions to date.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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