Amazon Games vice president Michael Frazzini has said that Twitch is doing “a great job” and that the online retailer’s recent acquisition will leave things largely intact.
Amazon and Twitch rocked the internet yesterday with the news that the giant online retailer will be purchasing the popular streaming site for a sum of 97 billion pennies (or $970 million if you prefer more convenient numbers). It’s a business deal that surprised many thanks to earlier report that Google was in the process of buying the service. Outside of simple shock however, it also left many users and fans of streaming anxious about how the deal will change Twitch going forward. According to Amazon, however, there won’t be any substantial changes at all.
That at least, was the sentiment put forward by Michael Frazzini, vice president of Amazon Games. Addressing the deal during the opening episode of Twitch Town Hall, Frazzini affirmed that Twitch is doing “a great job” and that Amazon doesn’t “want to change that at all.”
It was confirmed that the streaming site will become a subsidiary of Amazon, controlled by the retailer but still able to operate with independence. This promise of freedom was apparently one of the reasons that Twitch CEO Emmett Shear pursued this deal. “The reason I thought Amazon would be a good home for Twitch is that we had a really shared vision around where gaming industry is going,” he said.
In other words, Twitch fans should hopefully be able to expect their favorite site to stay the same beast it’s always been. There’s always the possibility, of course, that these sentiments won’t wind up translating into reality but, as with most things, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all goes.
Source: Twitch
Published: Aug 26, 2014 05:12 pm