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发帖数: 16971 | 1 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-a2z-game-studio-san-franc
Don't be fooled: Amazon's ambitions in the games business go far beyond
providing a platform for social games on its Kindle Fire tablet.
From the kind of people it's hiring, it's clear that Amazon intends to
challenge Zynga, King.com, and other makers of social games head-on.
Amazon is already quietly publishing online games through a subsidiary, A2Z
Research and Development, and is aggressively expanding in San Francisco—
the home turf of Zynga, the leader of the social-gaming industry.
Asked about its social-gaming plans, an Amazon.com PR representative
declined to comment.
In a little-noticed move, Amazon bought Reflexive Entertainment, a maker of
so-called casual games, in 2008. But Zynga has since upended the business,
replacing the casual business model of cheap or advertising-supported games
with the dominant social-gaming revenue stream of today: in-game currency
purchases.
Amazon continues to run the Reflexive business as a development studio in
Orange County. But Business Insider has learned that Amazon is trying to
staff up a studio in San Francisco—Zynga's home turf.
According to A2Z's website, that office houses employees working on digital-
music efforts such as Amazon's MP3 download store.
Right now, there are just a handful of job listings explicitly mentioning
games. But already, someveterans of Rivet Games, a high-flying games startup
which folded up shop earlier this year, have landed at Amazon. And in the
surest sign of big hiring plans ahead, Amazon has added recruiters with
specific experience in hiring games developers.
We're also told that Amazon's been trying to hire a high-ranking executive
to run a full-fledged studio.
And there's one more thing: Last month, Zynga declared itself openly in
competition with Amazon Web Services with its new zCloud offering—at least
for game developers looking for cloud computing. And Zynga's move to offer
game-publishing services and social features to third-party developers
likewise competes with Amazon's brand-new GameCircle service. | k********8
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