The curious case of Amazon’s deep plunge into the esports industry

Amazon’s been busy building out an epic esports ecosystem, or empire, that is simply unprecedented. Just in case you haven’t appreciated the reality of the situation, let’s take a look at the timeline.

• August 2012: Amazon announces the launch of Amazon Game Studios along with the debut of its first social game, Living Classics.
• February 2014: Amazon acquires Double Helix, a game studio that last year seemed to silently join the fold and merge into the Amazon Game Studios brand.
• August 2014: Amazon acquires leading esports broadcaster, Twitch, for a tune of close to $1 billion cash.
• February 2016: Amazon launches free cloud-based 3D game engine, coined Lumberyard, which enjoys deep integration with sister company, Twitch.
• August 2016: Twitch acquires Skype-like platform Curse, which creates programs like voice clients, databases, and mod managers for PC games.
• September 2016: Amazon Game Studios announces three upcoming esports-crafted games: Breakaway, Crucible, and New World. Breakaway, which is currently in Alpha, is integrated to Twitch with eSports features like Steam+, a virtual currency that is particularly well oriented to fanning fan engagement.
• February: Last month, Amazon announced hiring former chief of Sony’s online business, John Smedley, to run a new game studio in San Diego.

Now combine these elements together with the fact that Amazon’s ecosystem has Amazon Web Services at its disposal which, along with its digital and physical publishing infrastructure, creates the sort of one-two combination that I doubt anyone can offer a historical comparison to.