In an interesting turn of events, Amazon has officially closed a $970 million deal to acquire Twitch, after Google apparently dropped its billion-dollar bid a month ago. At first glance, the ecommerce giant and the live-streaming game platform have little in common, but a closer examination reveals that Amazon has been courting the gaming market for a while. It makes perfect sense: Twitch was increasingly running into licensing issues as it grew in size, and it needed a big partner to support its development, making Amazon a good fit.
If Google had closed the deal, Twitch would have predictably become YouTube’s “little brother.” At Amazon, however it has the chance to become the video mainstay due to its lack of user-generated or live video platform. And now that the acquisition has been made official, the online video landscape could be radically shifted.
