电视机顶盒Fire TV暴露亚马逊的游戏野心

    还记得我们漫步在街边书店的时刻吗？还记得从那些或严谨或荒诞或天马行空的书籍中获得快乐的感觉吗？去书店买书曾经是天经地义的事。

    不过，这样的时光已经一去不返。当然，大家可以把矛头主要对准亚马逊（Amazon）。这家市值高达1570亿美元的科技巨擘以网上售书起家，价格屠刀是其不二的竞争法宝，而它的终极目标是挤走低利润高成本的实体书店。而现在，亚马逊的“邪恶”目标终于实现了。但它并不满足，继续在其他领域大开杀戒，而且还取得了不小成果。（电子产品已大获成功。流行服饰还欠点火候。）

    4月2日，亚马逊推出了机顶盒Fire TV。这一次，它把目光瞄准了游戏行业。Fire TV售价99美元，除了常见的流媒体播放功能，它还可以玩视频游戏，而首发上市的游戏数高达100款。其中既有《我的世界》（Minecraft）和《怪兽大学》（Monster University）等热门休闲游戏，又有世嘉（Sega）、电子艺界（EA）、育碧（Ubisoft）、Telltale Games和Gamelot等大牌公司推出的“物美价廉型”核心游戏。用户可以选择Fire TV标配遥控器、智能手机应用，也可以选择亚马逊最新发布的Fire专用手柄游戏。后者将于一个月内开始零售，售价为39.99美元。

    相比这款价格平易近人的手柄以及独立的游戏服务，亚马逊新成立的游戏工作室意义更为重大。亚马逊游戏工作室专门为Fire TV开发独占游戏，而且它的开发团队正在迅速扩充：今年2月，亚马逊刚刚收购了拥有75名员工的游戏工作室Double Helix。据最新消息，亚马逊又挖来了两名资深游戏制作人：《传送门》（Portal）设计师金姆•斯威夫特和《孤岛惊魂2》（Far Cry 2）设计师克林特•霍金。亚马逊游戏工作室即将发布处女座《Sev Zero》。这是一款第三人称射击游戏，支持多人联网。无论从画面还是操作，这款游戏和电子艺界、世嘉等公司的核心游戏已经相差无几。

    但按照亚马逊的风格，Sev Zero肯定会走廉价路线，售价仅为6.99美元，购买Fire TV游戏手柄的玩家还可免费获得游戏。Fire TV平台上的游戏平均售价更是低至1.85美元。

    我们可以和Xbox、PlayStation等专用游戏机上的游戏做一番对比。最新版《魔兽世界》（World of Warcraft）的价格为49.99美元，如果是数字豪华版，价格更是高达69.99美元。PlayStation 3版本的《侠盗飞车5》（ Grand Theft Auto V ）售价54.99美元。目前还不能确定亚马逊是否有意说服这些顶级工作室为Fire TV开发游戏。核心玩家仍然会继续坚守自己的平台和游戏。但亚马逊通过Fire TV上的Sev Zero这类廉价游戏向大家宣告：游戏价格未来会降下来。

    音乐、电影、电视、新闻传媒和书籍，无一不在数字化进程中经历了剧烈的价格下跌，而唯有游戏能独善其身。随着Fire TV的推出，亚马逊或将重新定价游戏行业。游戏工作室，现在该你出招了。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    Remember bookstores? Those adorable little places of curated and whimsy and fanciful stories? The place where we purchased books?

    They're gone, mostly, and you can blame Amazon (AMZN). The $157 billion company got its start selling books online, happy to lose money while driving prices down, waiting for its brick-and-mortar competitors, with their thin margins and high overhead, to starve. They did, and Amazon won. The company has repeated this process for a number of other categories, to varying degrees of success. (Electronics, yes. Fashion, not so much.)

    With Amazon Fire TV, announced yesterday, Amazon has its sights set on the gaming industry. The company's new Fire TV streaming system costs $99 and features, alongside ample video content, a suite of 100 games. That includes popular casual gaming titles like Minecraft andMonsters University, and other "high-quality, low-cost" hardcore games from Sega, EA (EA), Ubisoft, Telltale Games, and Gamelot. Users have the option to play games with the standard Fire TV remote, a smartphone app, or Amazon's newly revealed Fire game controller, which will retail for $39.99 starting in a month.

    More meaningful than an inexpensive controller, or a game section in its service, is Amazon's new gaming studio. Amazon Game Studios is developing games exclusively for Fire TV, with a growing team: In February the company acquired a gaming studio with 75 employees called Double Helix. Today reports revealed Amazon hired Kim Swift, a designer of Portal, and Clint Hocking, a designer of Far Cry 2. Amazon Game Studios' first release is a game called Sev Zero, a third-person shooter game with the ability to go multiplayer. It looks and plays like the hardcore games from EA or Sega.

    But in typical Amazon style, Sev Zero is a steal. The game only costs $6.99, and users who purchase the Fire game controller get it for free. Beyond that, the average price of paid games on Fire TV is just $1.85.

    Compare that to the average price of videogames for Xbox (MSFT) or PlayStation (SNE). The latest World of Warcraft edition costs $49.99, or $69.99 if you upgrade to the digital deluxe edition. Grand Theft Auto V costs $54.99 for PlayStation 3. It's not clear if Amazon would convince those studios to include their games on Fire TV. Hardcore gamers will remain loyal to their systems and titles. But with Sev Zero and the host of low-cost games on Fire TV, Amazon is making a statement: The price of games will come down.

    Compared with any other piece of digital media, from music, movies, and TV to news and books, games haven't taken a price hit with the shift to digital. With its entrance into the category, Amazon is likely to change that. Your move, game studios.