Slashdot Mirror
Amazon To Buy Twitch For $970 Million
Dave Knott (2917251) writes Amazon has agreed to acquire the live game-streaming service Twitch for approximately $970 million in cash, a move that could help Amazon bolster its position in the fast-growing business of online gaming and give it technology to compete with video-streaming rivals Netflix and YouTube. The acquisition, which has been approved by Twitch's shareholders, is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Google had for some time been reported to have interest in acquiring Twitch, but those talks cooled in recent weeks. Google was unable to close the deal, said sources familiar with the talks, because it was concerned about potential antitrust issues that could have come with the acquisition.
They are really going to drive up to their house with a dump truck full of cash?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
They should have asked for it in gold bullion ;-) I doubt COMEX could come up with the requisite 746,154 troy ounces and we'd see a gold boom like never before!
Plus, who wouldn't want 51,165 pounds (23,208 kg) of gold?
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Okay, so this made a lot more sense when it was Google/YouTube making the buy. But what is Amazon looking to get here? Better streaming tech for their streaming Prime service? More FireTV users (if they make Twitch a FireTV exclusive for example)? Not quite understanding their motivation here.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The sums companies are paying to buy other companies is truly absurd. If we're all honest, very few companies are worth even a single billion. Let's just be honest.
Companies wanting to buy up perceived value is akin to puppy love in teenage boys: it's unrealistic. It doesn't last. Very few investments actually pay off at all. Personally, I'm hoping for another tech bubble to end this ridiculous spending spree.
When a business does really well and has no idea what to do with the money, they either start buying other businesses to "expand" or buy back their stock - to boost stock price to allow the CEO to make even ridiculous amount of money. Stock buybacks are NEVER done because management thinks their company is a good investment.
So, what is going on with Amazon is that they need to keep "growing" and Bezos has no idea how to do it. A sure sign of that is this disparate purchases with no direction in sight. There is no sign of strategic thinking here.
I didn't know what Twitch was. Luckily, the NY Times had an informative article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...
Jesus Christ. Humanity is doomed.
I don't respond to AC's.
For those not familiar with Twitch, every stream contains a "Now Playing: (Game)" thing with it, and you can select which game you're playing from a pre-defined list of games.
Bets on how long until that become a link straight to Amazon to buy said game, and how long until streamers become Amazon affiliates and start getting money for driving people to buy their games off Amazon?
Because that's the only angle I can see Amazon having here: trying to get gamers to grab games off Amazon. (And they do sell digital game downloads, so they do compete with things like Steam.)
Maybe Amazon can fix some of Twitch's more recent problems like the horrendous stream lag that makes it impossible for streamers to communicate with the stream chat since the stream now has something like 30 seconds of latency between streamer and audience. Then there's Twitch's new weird anti-piracy thing where they mute audio if they detect that the audio contains a copyrighted song (hint: for video games, that's always) and whatever other issues people are complaining about Twitch these days since I never bother to use it.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
For essentially the largest collection of vanity gaming shares in existence.
I don't really understand on what basis you say people can say this is a bad investments.
Twitch has (massive) infrastructure, excellent APIs, and brand recognition.
They operate in a market (live streaming) that is booming, where they essentially dominate. E-sports live broadcast alone is worth several hundred millions.
It will be long before TV even catches up on it, the target audience won't easily switch to TV from (the much more convenient) live streaming from a PC/Tablet UX.
SC2, Dota 2, League of Legens and others rake 1Million+ audiences for all major tournaments. This is happening.
who wouldn't want 51,165 pounds (23,208 kg) of gold?
Me. What the hell would I do with it? Pave the driveway?
Required reading for internet skeptics
To my knowledge, the law doesn't recognize an owner of exclusive rights in wrestling, javelin throw, chariot racing, jousting, or gridiron football. The law does, however, recognize an owner of copyright in a video game who has the legal right to pull streams off Twitch. For example, you can broadcast a joust, but Warner Bros. has the right to keep you from broadcasting Joust.
Payable in lifetime subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited and a million in Amazon coins for the app store. If Twitch argues enough they may even score a Fire TV and a Fire phone or two.
Here's an August 2014 link - I didn't notice that my first link was from 2006.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/premi...
What is the big idea around streaming games? You'll have to send a 1080p stream for ~60m and it will generate about 500MB of data. An average game will take you 10h to complete so that is 5GB of data. The average game in my Steam library is about 1GB, some are 10 or 15GB but those are the biggest and hopefully will give me a lot more enjoyment than 10h.
Just send/rent me out the game and install it locally. No need to stream it and invoke 200ms response times.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
But looking at the companies doing marketing in a broad online segment, i guess there is still available airtime to buy. And the big players are willing to do it. So i guess theres a market. Who gives a fuck about twitch chat which is completely wasted technology no one cares about. Just post a tweet about it. Fact is - they have a shitload of user base. That warants the value alone. And you can buy into a quite big exposure. If you think you can do better - just do it. Your desk drawer is filled with business plans and fundings anyway. So just do it.
made more sense for google to own. Watching twitch I've run into issues with the comcast bandwidth cap. We're in one of the trial markets 300GB/month and $10/50GB after that, 3 overages allowed/12 month period no charges.
I presume they took a look at the legal side of it and realized they're just one step away from the Fair Use at "play" here being a little too fair for the game producers...
why Twitch starting going bonkers with the copyright stuff a few months ago. Someone should have told Amazon the entire twitch community is waiting to jump ship once the 1st viable alternative presents itself. Kids get their streams shut down over music they have playing in their own homes/dorm rooms. Its gone from great to awful pretty quickly not to mention all the new ads and commercials.
Privately recorded videos fall under the conditions of the ticket granting admission to said insignificant local games. If said conditions include an assignment of copyright in any privately recorded video to the league, it could produce the situation you describe. But such conditions would not apply to, say, recording your kids playing soccer at a public park because nobody owns the exclusive rights to the sport of soccer itself. A video game publisher's copyright is different because it affects your ability to broadcast game play even if you start your own league or even if the match is not associated with a league at all.
Kappa