Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced in the last week of August about acquisition of the video game streaming site Twitch for $970 million in cash. The video streaming site has reported a monthly user base of around 55 million. CEO and Co-Founder of Twitch, Emmett Shear talked on CNBC about the acquisition and opportunities ahead of them through the deal with Amazon.
Two weeks after the deal with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), the Twich CEO, Shear said that he still feels like operating an independent company. He pointed out that the integration plans with Amazon is still being worked out. Shear feels that there might not be any major changes to the company in operations.
“I am expecting it to remain very similar. I think that one of the reasons I was attracted to the deal with the Amazon in first place was, Amazon really promised unprecedented degree of autonomy and ability to pursue our current ongoing strategy and really with more researches to do it faster. So I get to remain the CEO of Twitch Interactive. We are fully on sub obviously, but that’s a huge deal”, Shear said about the deal.
Twitch is not very popular among the general public until the acquisition by Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) came to light. It was quite popular with kids and gamers. People who love to play online games and watch games played by others visit Twitch.
Shear said that they have couple of huge opportunities to pursue with the $970 million that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has paid for the deal. First on the list of Shear is expanding into other platforms for video game streaming. He mentioned about the Xbox 4 integrations that the company had announced last year.
Second opportunity which Shear thinks that the company might explore is streaming mobile games. He mentioned that people started streaming the mobile game ‘Clash of Clans’ on Twitch after it gained huge popularity among the gaming community. He said that he is seeing a huge growth opportunity in that sector as well.
Among the shareholders of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is Fisher Asset Management, led by Ken Fisher. As of 30 June, 2014, they hold around 2.5 million company shares.
Disclosure: None
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