Amazon Acquires Video Gaming Studio Double Helix Games | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Acquires Video Gaming Studio Double Helix Games

techcrunch.com

72 pointshornokplease37 comments

The article says Double Helix is being acquired for "both talent and IP," which... I can't fathom what IP Double Helix owns, unless it's IP from a game or games that haven't been released or even announced yet. They've worked on mostly licensed games, and I don't think Shiny owned the Earthworm Jim IP when the merger happened.

As for this rumored $300 Amazon console... huh? That's more than a 360, which still is getting some new games and has a massive back catalog. It's more than a WiiU, which has support of some of the most popular video game IP ever and some really good first-party developers and is still struggling from lack of third-party support. An Amazon console priced like a Ouya and targeting that niche, I can see. But a full-priced console? It's going to take far more than one AAA developer that has focused almost entirely on licensed IP to support that.

I believe the most likely thing to happen is Amazon undercutting others. 300$ for an Amazon console makes no sense.

More likely Amazon's planning an Onlive-like service. It would be a better fit for their cloud-based services approach.

They do have AppStream, and they do target it for gaming applications, but according to the FAQ:

http://aws.amazon.com/appstream/faqs/

"Applications that have extremely low tolerance for latency are not recommended for streaming. Examples include first person shooters or player vs. player fighting games."

And AppStream seems to require applications that are specifically written for it, so they still have the same problem with third-party support. And if it's a primarily streaming-based gaming console, the idea that it would cost $300 makes even less sense.

Their G2 instances support nvidia grid. You can get an otoy ami that's meant for streaming games.

I've always felt a bit awkward about people from Shiny, who used to create ridiculously creative games back in the day, churning out games based on Hollywood film franchises. I'm not really sure how to feel about this development, too.

(Note: I haven't played anything from Double Helix's current output, so I could be very wrong about feeling awkward here.)

Perhaps if they have equity they don't feel too bad about the decision. :-)

Sometimes a commercial tie-in can mean the difference between ten thousand playing your game and ten million.

Has Double Helix done anything really good? Last time I heard they tried to remake Killer Instinct into a cheap cash in where you have to pay to buy characters.

Killer Instinct is pretty popular, and fairly well reviewed. It did go with a model similar to League of Legends where you can play it for free, but then buy each character, or buy a pack of characters[1]. It's not a terrible model if it's priced fairly and balanced well. The characters do seem a little expensive, but if you play each one for more than a few hours, it's probably worth it in the end.

The worst offenders are games like Forza that are a $60 up front purchase, and then also have micro-transactions to buy cars (you can also grind many hours away to get them).

I believe Double Helix also has a game called Strider (related to the original arcade game of the same name somehow)[2] coming out soon that is somewhat anticipated.

[1] http://killerinstinct.wikia.com/wiki/Killer_Instinct_(Xbox_O... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strider_(2014_video_game)

I feel it is disingenuous to compare this to League of Legends' model. The big difference is that in LoL, you can buy characters with in-game currency earned from playing the game. The only thing you can't buy with earned currency are cosmetic skins for your characters. So while you might not look as fancy, you're never at a tactical disadvantage in-game just because you haven't sunk a wad of cash into it.

KI:3, if I remember right, only gives you two characters to play for free, and doesn't stop opponents with bought characters from playing you. I presume KI, like most fighting games, have attempted to balance the characters; this may alleviate the point somewhat. But typically they never get the balance quite right for all skill levels. That is, Alice and Bob might be equal at the top-level competitive play (and even that is a stretch in most games) but at the beginner's tier, Bob is way stronger. A great example of this is strong & slow characters versus weak & fast characters. The faster characters are typically better for beginners as they're better for button mashing and missing an attack isn't as detrimental to your health bar.

It's a demo. You can buy all of the available DLC for the price of a standard game. The fact that you can play against people with the full game when you only have the demo might be a strategy to get you to buy, but I'd wager most people would call it better than the alternative.

Sad to realize the studio behind Messiah [0] and Earthworm Jim [1] has ended up specializing in shoveling out licensed trash [2][3].

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(video_game)

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm_jim

2: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/battleship

3: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/gi-joe-the-rise-of-c...

If Amazon wants to "compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo," they'll need to do more than make an Android console. If they can't get cross platform titles, then all they are is an overpriced Ouya.

One interesting part of the story is amazon having a sub $300 console that competes directly with Sony and Microsoft.

My guess about that that it would be:

(a) a console financed by ads or amazon product sales on the tv

(b)A weaker console with quality content being offered through cloud gaming

And my guess that the price would be substantially less than $300.

Does anybody have other rumors or guesses about that ?

The article itself links to some rumors :)

http://www.vg247.com/2014/01/28/amazons-android-console-to-l...

http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-rumored-to-be-working-on-an-andr...

It sounds reasonable, based on their previous Kindle work. My own speculation is that It'll probably be priced much cheaper than U$ 300. One rumor even speculates about U$ 99.

When Amazon competes with itself the software side tends to lose. In my experience the Kindle App has been lackluster, which is surprising considering Amazon's development of the kindle and assumed book-loving internal culture (maybe that's not there anymore?). Stanza is good but was bought by Amazon and (again, from what I saw) nothing was done with it.

Prime Video is great on iOS but has a very very odd lack of presence on Android, despite being available on the Kindle Fire.

Kindle HD/HDX devices are unable to install apps from the Google Play store without rooting or other technical workarounds.

My point with these is that there appears to be a history of Amazon acting in favor of their own platforms and applying a strategy that encourages users to "buy in" to more Amazon.

Amazon's video game digital delivery service has proven to be price-competitive with Steam, but downloading games directly from Amazon is a bare-bones affair.

If Amazon wants to own more of the living room I'm guessing that:

- They will want to get out of the business of being a Steam key reseller if they have their own console

- Seeing as they've acquired a game developer it's plausible they produce content that is available only in the Amazon app store and not Google play. Over time this may become Amazon-console exclusive as well.

- Prime Video will continue to be offered on other platforms but will get less attention over time in favor of adding features to a Amazon-console version of Prime Video (I am honestly surprised that the iOS version is so good)

As far as pricing and ads, I would expect to see a dashboard with heavy tie ins to Prime Video and Amazon's App Store. Maybe even allow purchasing of merchandise related to the media you're consuming (just watched Transformers? Buy a t-shirt or play the video game now!). I'd like to see a price less than $300 - a Kindle HDX 7" 64GB Wifi is $300, if you omit the screen and battery and add more storage (I don't know the cogs of those things) you might be able to stay under that.

How about a steam box with custom integration for amazon prime video streaming and buying digital downloads from amazon.

This is probably their strategy. They built an app store for android. They want to build custom content for a steam box.

Interesting. With the new intel processors you could get a $250 decent steam box. Amazon can get it for less,and than subsidize it some more and get it to a good price with a lot of really attractive content.

Still all signs point to android.

Seems like Google and Amazon are building similar companies baselined on revenues from disparate sources (AMZN: Merchandise/GOOG:Search -- realize this is not the complete picture but certainly the starting point). Interesting to see these types of companies emerge (ones willing to dilute/evolve from their original core competancy in order to sustain). Will traditional (large) companies do the same?

Has Google moved into the gaming industry at all? I've always thought the lack of Google gaming assets was surprising given the popularity of Android games.

Ingress[1] is a real-world game created by a startup within Google.

[1] https://www.ingress.com/

My guess is that Ingress (which is currently Android based) is a testing ground for eventually creating a real life, meatspace MMORPG that will be the "killer app" for Google Glass at mainstream launch.

Amazon is already a far more diversified company than google. Google's revenue breaks down into: search, network (backbone ISP), and "other". Under "other" is gmail, gdocs, youtube, android, everything that isn't search. Google is very, very bad at productizing and monetiziation. They are even worse at maintaining customer relations with anyone other than advertisers. The same is not true of amazon, who began as a bookstore and have only become more and more diversified over time.

I'd go as far as suggesting that google actually makes the most cash from advertising, and all their other products are to show more users more ads.

I think this kind of generalization is not surprising and used to be the standard back in the day. Nokia at various points made rubber boots, paper, cables and telegraphs, tires, robotics, power generator components, gas masks, chemicals, televisions, telephone exchanges, etc. Mitsubishi did coal mining, insurance, banking, trade, optics and a ton of other things. Sony does life insurance and banking.

Amazon is eating the world. I can't wait until they start producing TV shows and movies like Netflix. The game is on.

They've made at least one TV show called Betas (I do not recommend it)

Appropriately, they had Alphas before Betas came out.

CompleteMoron2: all your posts are dead. I don't know why. If you did not know this already, perhaps you know it now.

Sorry, I looked at it again and it's Alpha House. Alphas was a sci fi show.

I have mixed feeling about this. Although Amazon is one of my favorite companies with great customer service, I am asking myself whether the day will come where they'll eat up all the competition, make the cost of entry to any domain prohibitive (by negotiating great distribution deals for themselves -- deals that no one else can strike), and then raising the prices. Just to be clear: if Amazon can buy a pencil at 1c due to bulk orders, and everyone else can only get it at 3c (due to smaller volumes of sales), Amazon could sell it for 3c, make profit, and still not allow anyone else into the market. As a consumer, what do I care, right? I'm always getting the lowest price. But as an entrepreneur and someone who wants to see things get better, it's an issue if no one else can "disrupt" the market in a financially responsible way ( <-- and I'm specifically phrasing it this way because I think it's in mode these days to get a lot of VC money to "scale," and worry about profit later. I find it hard to believe that with just VC money anyone could "scale" to Amazon's dimensions).

Look at Walmart and see if your fears have come true.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to have a monopoly; it is illegal to have an abusive monopoly. If Amazon really does build a system where they truly can sell everything cheaper than the competition could even hope to, and then they do, well... great! That's a pretty big win for society in general.

If, on the other hand, they use their monopoly position to illegally crush everyone else, then raise prices until the next time they have to crush someone, you have an antitrust case. And note that there's already more than a whiff of accusations about the former going on, that they are using Amazon stock price to power a market domination move which they will then use to monopolize and extract rent. It's a bit hypothetical at the moment, but it's not as if nobody's looking for this to occur.

Amazon's stock price is, IMHO, pretty clearly predicated on the "crush all opposition than extract rent" model being what the market expects to see, incidentally. Stay tuned.

They are attempting to produce movies and TV shows, though they're not having the creative or commercial success that Netflix has.

This may have something to do with motivation, and with the resources committed accordingly. Netflix is a TV and movie company, and it saw original content as a life-or-death strategic imperative. So it gladly spent $100M on "House of Cards," right off the bat. Amazon is a much larger, more diversified retailer, for whom TV and movies are but one small slice of a much bigger pie. Amazon hasn't taken this area as seriously as Netflix has, possibly because it doesn't consider the mission to be as central to its very existence. Its output, to date, has been fairly unimpressive and unambitious. ("Alpha House" and "Betas" have high-caliber casts and writing staffs, but word on the street is that the shows were ordered and rushed into production as a competitive answer to Netflix's recent successes.)

I quit watching Betas because I couldn't be bothered to wait a week between episodes.

> I can't wait until they start producing TV shows

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5379520/amazon-studios-the-...

Maybe you can... wait a little longer?

"As you can tell by the titles, it specializes in large-scale action games based on blockbuster franchises." - makes me sad when companies have to do this to survive :(.

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