Amazon Acquires Video Gaming Studio Double Helix Games

The article says Double Helix is being acquired for &quot;both talent and IP,&quot; which... I can&#x27;t fathom what IP Double Helix owns, unless it&#x27;s IP from a game or games that haven&#x27;t been released or even announced yet. They&#x27;ve worked on mostly licensed games, and I don&#x27;t think Shiny owned the Earthworm Jim IP when the merger happened.<p>As for this rumored $300 Amazon console... huh? That&#x27;s more than a 360, which still is getting some new games and has a massive back catalog. It&#x27;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&#x27;s going to take far more than one AAA developer that has focused almost entirely on licensed IP to support that.

I&#x27;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&#x27;m not really sure how to feel about this development, too.<p>(Note: I haven&#x27;t played anything from Double Helix&#x27;s current output, so I could be very wrong about feeling awkward here.)

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.

Sad to realize the studio behind Messiah [0] and Earthworm Jim [1] has ended up specializing in shoveling out licensed trash [2][3].<p>0: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Messiah_(video_game)</a><p>1: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm_jim" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Earthworm_jim</a><p>2: <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/battleship" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.metacritic.com&#x2F;game&#x2F;xbox-360&#x2F;battleship</a><p>3: <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/gi-joe-the-rise-of-cobra" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.metacritic.com&#x2F;game&#x2F;xbox-360&#x2F;gi-joe-the-rise-of-c...</a>

If Amazon wants to &quot;compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo,&quot; they&#x27;ll need to do more than make an Android console. If they can&#x27;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.<p>My guess about that that it would be:<p>(a) a console financed by ads or amazon product sales on the tv<p>(b)A weaker console with quality content being offered through cloud gaming<p>(c) A combination of a,b. Also this console will be somehow tied to prime.<p>And my guess that the price would be substantially less than $300.<p>Does anybody have other rumors or guesses about that ?

Seems like Google and Amazon are building similar companies baselined on revenues from disparate sources (AMZN: Merchandise&#x2F;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&#x2F;evolve from their original core competancy in order to sustain). Will traditional (large) companies do the same?

Amazon is eating the world. I can&#x27;t wait until they start producing TV shows and movies like Netflix. The game is on.

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