Amazon Pitches Prime To Gamers

Much like millennials, gamers weren’t a consumer demographic brands spent much time thinking about a decade ago. Now, though everyone realizes that there’s big bucks to be made doing digital business – none do more so than Amazon.

The Verge reported that Amazon is making a push for a greater share of the video game market with a new Prime campaign that offers 20 percent off all new game purchases for members only. For now, the deal only includes physical discs instead of digital downloads, and games can’t be coupled with other offers that already lower the price beyond 20 percent.

While the discount may not be enough to get gamers’ blood pumping on sight, it could be enough to sway their wallets over time. Most major video game releases today run into the $60 range, with special and collector’s editions of landmark titles fetching into the $100+ level. Getting $12 back on a $60 game or much more on a limited edition might be enough to convince shoppers who buy multiple games per year and are looking for a more convenient shipping experience for physical discs.

However, Venture Beat noted that though offering a 20 percent discount is a solid enough move by Amazon, it’s more likely than not just the opening salvo in an aggressive campaign to win the hearts, minds and wallets of gamers across the world. While shipping physical CDs just requires a deal with a publisher and a warehouse to store the pallets full of them, hosting, licensing and parsing out thousands of digital copies every second is another story entirely.

But when it works, it works. Valve, a name PC gamers know, has grown fat on the profits of simply running an online store for PC and iOS game downloads called Steam. And with the ever-growing branch of Amazon Web Services bulking up each day, it’s hard not to see digital downloads in the future for Amazon Prime’s gamer constituents.