Time was traditional broadcasters lost a few viewers to video games, particularly the young using the interactive capabilities of their TV set. Now, broadcasters are losing viewers to people watching other people play games, and the result is a big deal in internet circles.
According to the New York Times, the website where this activity is taking place is called Twitch – and it is going to internet giant Amazon for the gigantic price of $1.1B.
NYT says Amazon had to outplay Google and other big internet players to score Twitch’s 55M monthly users.
In addition to having access to all these site users, NYT says Amazon would like to deliver the content to tablets and smartphones of its own manufacture.
RBR-TVBR observation: We can’t even watch our own kids play video games – we quickly have no idea what is going on. But if it is a video game we can play, and yes, we have access to WII versions of Galaxian and Pacman, early 2-D low-bit onetime arcade games we can handle – we’d rather play than watch.
(To put it in stark relief, we introduced the static alien attack formation and accelerating pace of Galaxian to our son when he was about five, and after a while he turned to us bored and asked, “You mean all you do is shoot stuff?” Such is the state of the current generation gap.)
But on the other hand, our kids can’t imagine what could possibly be going on in our minds as we sit in rapt attention to the pastoral chess game that is major league baseball.
So we say two things: To each his own, and we’re pretty sure Amazon’s Jeff Bezos knows what he’s doing.
