Here’s why Amazon has become a major player in games (interview)

Bit by bit, Amazon has become a game company. The world’s largest e-commerce vendor bought its first game studio, Reflexive Entertainment, six years ago. In 2011, it launched its Android Appstore with thousands of apps, including games. In 2012, it launched its first mobile games produced by its own game studio, Amazon Game Studios. And in February, the company bought game studio Double Helix Games, the maker of the Killer Instinct titles. This interest in gaming is no longer accidental. It’s intentional.

In the meantime, it added game capability to its Kindle Fire tablets. Then it launched Amazon Fire TV set-top box with Android games such as Sev Zero. And last week it finally debuted its Fire Phone with games like To-Fu Fury. Skeptics may have seen these moves as tiny nods toward gaming. But Ethan Evans, vice president of the Amazon Appstore, recently painted a vision for gaming’s future at the Casual Connect game conference in San Francisco.