Amazon to buy videogame platform Twitch for $970 mn

 Amazon said Monday it has agreed to buy the videogame platform Twitch for $970 million, bringing it access to a huge audience who watch games being streamed live via the site, AFP reports.

The three-year-old, San Francisco-based Twitch Interactive streams games being played for non-playing viewers to watch, and hosts gaming events.

It allows viewers to chat with the players and others, lending it some of the qualities of social networking websites, and it sells advertising to generate income.

"Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month," said Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com.

Twitch claims 55 million visitors a month to its website, via desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, and more than one million "broadcasters," gamers who stream video of their games over the Internet via Twitch.

It also says that visitors log in long periods on the website, averaging 106 minutes a day per person, putting it in the leagues of streaming video like Netflix.

In July, Twitch had more than 55 million unique visitors who viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch produced by more than one million broadcasters, including individual gamers, pro players, publishers, developers, media outlets, conventions and stadium-filling e-sports organizations, Amazon said.

The online retail giant said it would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Twitch for about $970 million in cash, with the deal, already approved by Twitch's shareholders, expected to close by the end of the year.

That would support Amazon in its fight to capture a large share of the streaming audience market. The online retailing giant is already pressing hard to add users of its streaming movie service, hoping to overtake Netflix.

Amazon shares had climbed 0.7 percent to $334.02 Monday on media reports that the Twitter takeover was looming. Shares were up 0.1 percent in after-market trade following the announcement.