Amazon an unlikely winner in social gaming's growth

When you think of the companies that have benefited the most from the explosive growth of social games, a few names probably spring to mind. Facebook, of course, and definitely Farmville-maker Zynga. Playfish and Playdom, surely, in the wake of their lucrative buyouts. Well, one name that probably doesn't come to mind, but probably should, is Amazon.

As VentureBeat notes, Amazon's Web Services (AWS) division provides the hosting that powers six to eight of the top ten Facebook games, according to AWS' Jeff Barr. This means companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom pay Amazon substantial sums of money so they don't have to worry about things like server maintenance, bandwidth, backups and security for their growing game. Those substantial sums have helped make AWS into a $500 million a year business for Amazon, according to some estimates,

Of course the relationship isn't perfect -- problems with AWS scaling are likely behind some of the outages that occasionally plague many growing games. Still, Amazon has positioned itself well to benefit both from online sales of disc-based games and from the growth of web-based games.

Amazon will duel Zynga in the social games arena, recent hire suggests

Who else wants in on this? Linkedin? Twitter? It appears that gargantuan Internet retailer Amazon looks to enter the social games melee as well, as the company has hired veteran pen-and-paper (think Dungeons and Dragons) game designer Jonathan Tweet as Game Designer/Producer, according to his Linkedin page, IndustryGamers reports. There are no details regarding Amazon's first social game, but Tweet did confirm his new position to the website.

Tweet is best known for his involvement with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition and RPGs (role-playing games) like Ars Magica and Everway. However, he has also worked most recently in Facebook games with Gamehouse, and considering Tweet will be leading the project, IndustryGamers guesses that the Amazon social game will have RPG elements. Will we have to swing a sword and fling spells for even better deals on Amazon? Probably not, but that'd be pretty darn cool.

This is far from the first time the Internet retailer has dived into gaming. Even before launching its own Android Appstore, through which PopCap has launched an Android game, the company bought Reflexive Entertainment in 2008 to sell its games online. It appears that, slowly but surely, Amazon is getting serious about gaming--just like everybody else. We've contacted Amazon for comment.

[Via VentureBeat]

Do you think Amazon can create a social game with the potential of a FarmVille or Bejeweled Blitz? How do you think the company will distribute this game, and will you be there to try it out?