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From today, Amazon is rebranding their monthly gaming subscription service Twitch Prime under a new moniker, Prime Gaming.
Prime Gaming, which is included in Amazon Prime, will keep all the benefits from its predecessor – including a rotating selection of free games each month, additional in-game loot and rewards, and a free monthly subscription to a Twitch channel of the user’s choosing.
The launch also comes with additional benefits, promising more content than ever before, alongside deals with the likes of Rockstar and EA. As well as featuring more mobile-friendly titles like Words With Friends 2.
In a digital event last week announcing the launch of Prime Gaming, Brandon Ove, head of brand at Prime Gaming, ran us through the rationale for the brand change.
“We initially launched gaming benefits on Twitch in 2016,” said Ove, “and it’s already sort of become one of the fastest growing prime benefits in terms of users collecting this content. So far this year, the programme has offered over $6,000 worth of in game content and free games.
“And as both usage and the offering has grown, we wanted to really bring it core to Prime and the entertainment offering alongside video, and music and reading. And offer even more content, even more free games, and remove the need to link a Twitch account to access all that content – so Prime members will only need their membership going forward.”
That explains Amazon moving away from the Twitch branding for the service, then. Ove also adds that there was a “lot of confusion” about Twitch Prime, with users not knowing if Twitch Prime came with an additional cost. The rebrand seems to be aimed at assuring customers that Prime Gaming is included with the additional Amazon Prime features.
Despite dropping Twitch form the branding, Ove is quick to note that the Twitch integration remains important to the platform.
“Another important component of the programme to us are the all of the creators on Twitch. The subscription benefit really helps twitch creators engage their audiences and really develop a revenue stream. As Prime members use that for each twitch channel subscription, they get paid just like it was an out of pocket subscription that the customer bought. And so with the launch of Prime Gaming, Twitch creators have even more opportunity to introduce their channels, their content, their personality and their passion to the more than 150 million Prime members worldwide
“And what we found is the program’s really great for game developers. It helps them reach a whole new audience and engage and re engage their their players more deeply. And we know this is true because we’ve offered a lot of long term programmes with some of the biggest games and publishers in the world.”
As Ove himself states, very little will change for existing Twitch Prime members today – who can claim their Prime Gaming benefits here.
“It’s going to be a lot easier to access everything,” said Ove. “The main thing that’s going to be different moving forward is just the amount of content that we offer through the programme… The breadth and depth of the content catalogue that we’ve already seen grow a lot recently will continue to grow.”
