From Amazon's Press Release:
In July, more than 55 million unique visitors viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch produced by more than 1 million broadcasters, including individual gamers, pro players, publishers, developers, media outlets, conventions and stadium-filling esports organizations.
Amazon will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Twitch for approximately $970 million in cash
The Wall Street Journal ranked Twitch as the 4th largest website in terms of peak internet traffic
Twitch too has confirmed the acquisition in its own press release. Noteworthy is also that apparently Google's Youtube was also interested in buying Twitch.
Enthusiastic e-sports followers surely don't get around Twitch as it regularly takes care of the streaming of the biggest e-sports events (sometimes having heavily criticized exclusive rights) such as Dota 2's The International, StarCraft 2's WCS, most ESL events and many more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:10AM
Since it's Amazon, there probably won't be a form for angry gamers to file takedown requests of streams that aired their losses!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:45AM
Why else would Amazon buy Twitch?
Same thing happened years ago when Google bought YouTube.
Like the old saying says: "If you're not the customer (advertisers), you're the product (audience)."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:57AM
I guess I finally am showing my age, because I don't get it. People want to watch other people play video games? Boggles my mind. Games are boring to begin with, wandering around finding door keys and so on, and fighting one random enemy after another. Watching someone else do it would be really boring. And it's worth almost a billion dollars? The world has turned upside down for me.
I'm going to go start a business that points webcams at freshly painted walls, letting people watch the paint dry live over the Internet, and sell my startup for a billion dollars. Wait... my phone just lit up ... Google ... Amazon ... Microsoft ...
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Informative) by tempest on Tuesday August 26 2014, @01:33PM
I probably don't get it either, but I do find some value in Twitch while evaluating games to buy. Gameplay is important to me, so watching actual content gives me an idea how a game flows. There's only so much faith I can put in "reviews", particularly with how many of them simply lack skill in games to properly evaluate good systems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tramii on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:08PM
I could say the exact same thing about watching sports and people have been doing that for a long time. I have no idea how people can watch stuff like golf, bowling or chess tournaments for hours on end. These "E-Sports" are basically the same thing.
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:18PM
People want to watch other people play video games?
Apparently, many do. Skimming through the counts there are a lot of people viewing streams.
I personally watched twitch for three reasons:
1. Honest demos - a couple of games I was on the fence and so watching someone play made the difference. I probably could have YouTubed them, but it is easier to find on Twitch than sorting through a bazillion minecraft or garry's mod videos.
2. Companies and some individuals are starting to use it as their livecast solution. Possibly because it is cross-platform and easy to use.
3. Boredom. Since it is on a bunch of platforms I own, I might pop it open to see what is popular and see if anything catches my eye. It's easy to jump on a stream and if you aren't impressed, jump to another one.
I am very surprised Google didn't buy them. I figured they would integrate it with YouTube, with a "watch live" product. It was very clear that whoever bought them, was buying the eyeballs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:34PM
You seriously don't understand the idea of watching people play games? Man...
Maybe you should have a look at something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHhe_LE00XU [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:56PM
It's exactly the same as sports. Why do people enjoy watching other people kicking and throwing various balls around? Who knows? They seem to enjoy it, and it is doing no harm, so may as well let them do as they want. (And you don't want to know how much the sports industry is worth collectively.)
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by richtopia on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:08PM
I would take the comparison further. You may play football in your backyard or you used to play football in highschool, but you are by no means NFL quality. So you can watch on TV for the game taken to the limits.
I don't watch Twitch, but I watch Day[9]'s commentary of Starcraft 2. I'm happy playing bronze league games (any higher 1v1 is too stressful for my tastes), but seeing what professionals can pull off is inspiring. A good commentator helps too.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mckwant on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:07PM
Yeah, I feel you, but if you're doing $someThing, then wouldn't you want to watch the world's best at it? Chess guys like to analyze matches between GMs. So, in this case, my daughter was getting into Pokemon (Trading Card Game). I checked out the World Championships on Twitch, just to see what the deal was. Fairly tolerable.
I also checked out an FPS championship (don't recall which one). Totally unwatchable. The problem's not the "action," it's how to represent the action in a digestible form for the viewer. They assumed I knew the map, and the key points to the map, which wasn't the case for me.
It's the number I can't figure out. $1.1B? Really? I get that "multiple niche audiences" are the new "mainstream," but good grief.
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Wednesday August 27 2014, @10:51PM
A big, important part of commentating a live FPS game (especially a tournament match) is that the commentators usually have to be completely clueless too.
It's more fun that way. "Now, this next item is crucial, I think we can all expect to see these two great players to battle for it very shortly..." And then you just get to wait and see if the prophecy is ever fulfilled. Chances are, it'll all work out. :p
(Score: 1) by ramloss on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:37PM
It's no different from watching sports, and a single basketball team costs twice as much, or that's what Steve Ballmer thinks:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-13/four-ballmer-buys-crazier-than-the-los-angeles-clippers [businessweek.com]
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday August 27 2014, @03:28AM
According to CNBC, Twitch got it's Venture funding from Ethan Kurzweil, Ray's son.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101947806 [cnbc.com]