亚马逊强势进军视频游戏领域
| 2014-09-02 11:50
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Amazon is serious about video games. The e-commerce giant just paid $1 billion to acquire online social video company Twitch, which has a devoted monthly fan base of over 55 million gamers watching 15 billion minutes of content created by over 1 million game broadcasters. It’s the latest example of Amazon investing heavily in the burgeoning global video game space.
The company has built its new hardware ecosystem from the ground up with gaming in mind. Amazon acquired developer developer Double Helix Games earlier this year, so it could create exclusive games for its customers. With more people gaming across more devices than ever before—and spending more time each day doing—video games are becoming just as important as movies and television shows in attracting new customers and keeping current subscribers entertained, saysWedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.
Amazon sells approximately 10 million Kindles since the e-reader debuted 2007, according to Pachter, who forecasts the company will also sell 5 million Fire TVs and 2 million Fire Phones this year. With 400 million TVs in the U.S alone, Amazon is entering the domain dominated by Sony , Microsoft and Nintendo at the same time as companies like Nvidia, Valve, Mad Catz, Ouya and Alienware are targeting the living room. Pachter believes there’s room for multiplayer players in this space and that exclusive games could give Amazon and edge on the competition.
Mike Frazzini, vice president of Amazon Games, discusses the evolution of cross-platform gaming and how the company plans to use Fire TV, Fire phone and Kindle to connect gamers in new ways. Frazzini spoke with Fortune prior to the news Amazon was acquiring Twitch. We reached out Tuesday and asked him about the role Twitch will serve in Amazon’s gaming system. An edited and condensed interview follows.
Fortune: What role will Twitch play within Amazon’s video game ecosystem?
Frazzini: Amazon has long admired Twitch for the innovative social video platform that they’ve created for their community, and we want Twitch to keep doing what they do best. First and foremost, we want Twitch to just keep going. We look forward to learning from Twitch, and over time finding the right ways to help them move faster inventing on behalf of the community.
How were video games part of the design process for Fire TV?
When we started thinking about Fire TV, we knew right away that it would be all about the range of content you can enjoy through the device — movies, TV, music, photos, FreeTime for kids, and of course games. We wanted to make sure customers could find and discover content easily and intuitively using voice search. And we wanted to offer it all at a great price.
We also wanted to be able to offer customers a great gaming experience with a large selection of fun games, at super affordable prices. We wanted both a breadth of games that customers already know and love, like Ashpalt 8 and Minecraft, as well as offering new experiences. That’s one of the reasons we built Sev Zero: Air Support – an exclusive game that combines tower defense with a shooter, and the ability to play co-op with a second screen. In order to deliver a great selection of games at great prices, we needed the hardware and the user experience to work with games. Fire TV comes with 2GB of RAM, for example, which helps a lot with the types of games that we were able to make available.
你们通过Kindle游戏了解到顾客的哪些需求，并把它们应用在了Fire电视上？ 我们通过Kindle游戏了解到，降低开发者在Fire电视上发布游戏的难度是非常重要的。我们在应用商店上花了几年时间，就是为了开发者能够非常便捷地在我们的应用商店和设备上发布游戏。比如我们有一个快速审批流程，能让开发者在很短的时间里把游戏发布上线。所以我们希望能让开发者很容易地把现有游戏搬到Fire电视上。由于Fire OS操作系统是在Android基础上构建的，因此这个程序也很简单，很多开发者都跟我们讲，他们的游戏如此容易地移植到Fire电视上，让他们感到非常吃惊。 另外给用户提供更多游戏和更多选择也很重要。我们很喜欢移动游戏的开放性，从中也受到了很多启发，它允许用户在多个设备上进行联机，我们希望把这种特性带到电视里。很快你在《我的世界》这款游戏里就能看到玩家进行联机——一个人在电视上玩，另一个人则通过Kindle Fire平板、iPhone或者其它移动设备进行联机。这也正好是我和我的孩子们经常用Fire电视干的事。它非常有意思。 你们是怎样为大屏游戏体验选择芯片技术的？ 我们希望用户可以在一款99美元的设备上玩大量物美价廉的游戏。Fire电视提供了很多内容，包括游戏，当然也不仅限于游戏，很多用户也会买它来看电影、电视剧……然后他们会发现也能在它上面玩游戏。或者有人买它来打游戏，结果发现它也能听音乐……我们选择的芯片能完美地做到这一点。 在Fire电视发布之后，哪种游戏类型或哪款游戏最受用户欢迎？ 很多游戏类型都很受欢迎。前面提到的《Sev Zero：空中支援》非常受用户欢迎，不过这款游戏毕竟是专门为Fire电视开发的。其它受欢迎的游戏还包括《行尸走肉》(The Walking Dead)、《雷曼嘉年华跑酷》(Rayman Fiesta Run)、《狂野飙车8》、《滑雪大冒险》(Ski Safari)、《我的世界》和《GTA》等等。基本上，好玩、制作精良并且在大屏幕上显示效果比较好的游戏都非常受欢迎。 你认为多玩家联机对于大屏游戏来说扮演了什么样的角色？ 我认为，就电视体验而言，多玩家联机扮演了相当重要的角色。虽然玩游戏的时候并非必须要联机，但是它的确会让有些游戏玩起来更有意思。我们这里有《Sev Zero》发布一个月后的一项数据，这项数据显示，人们如果与别人联机玩这款游戏的话，他们玩游戏的时间会比自己一个人玩长出67%。这种联机体验效果如此之好，让我们非常兴奋。 跟Kindle相比，Fire电视用户的人口构成有什么不同？ 差别并不大。Fire电视是娱乐类用户的不二之选，很多人可能买了它以后只是看看电视和电影，但后来也开始在电视上玩游戏、分享照片等等。我们发现，如果一款设备可以做很多事情，用户往往会比一开始花更多的时间去用它。我们发现这一点也适用于Fire电视。我们已经发现很多不同年龄的用户在玩很多类型的游戏。 你们给Fire电视也配了一个游戏手柄，你们从传统的游戏机上学到了什么？ 我们希望设计一个让大家觉得舒服又熟悉的游戏手柄，让用户拿起来就能玩。我们的Fire游戏手柄跟传统手柄布局很像，希望为大家带来一种熟悉的感觉。 横跨电视、平板电脑和智能手机的跨平台游戏体验有哪些机会？ 我们已经开始在这方面进行尝试。比如我们前面谈到的《我的世界》这款游戏，玩家可以在不同的设备上进行联机，比如一个人在Fire电视上玩，其他人在智能手机或平板电脑上玩。《Sev Zero》也可以进行联机，其中一个玩家在Fire电视上作为“主力”，第二个玩家用平板电脑帮他打怪。总之，随着联网设备的繁荣发展，以及云技术带来的无缝联接，跨平台游戏有着巨大的机会。它非常开放，而且有很多可能。从我们现在看到的来说，我们知道跨平台游戏能够获得玩家的响应，而且我们也很希望看到开发者能够带来哪些新体验。（财富中文网） 相关阅读：  |