It seems to me that Amazons long term strategy is to become a "Conglomerate of Brands", leveraging the profits from one business unit to buy out unrelated business. This sort of acquisition doesn't, as far as I can see, advance a particular core business unit (I'm aware Amazon have toyed with games publishing, but its not exactly a core business unit).
I suppose it makes sense, investors want their investment to be safe, by diversifying through acquisition they can give that to shareholders.
For the other rumoured purchasers, Disney and Apple, would have a direct affect on their business strategy. Disney as a media asset business, and Apple though the potential to expand their Gaming strategy on their own platforms.
Amazon's strategy is to be a smarter GE, by expanding into new areas that feed power into the Amazon flywheel.
EA would give them control over a core library of content and IP, that they could use to (a) ensure continued access into home consoles for their other products, (b) run as a game on demand service attached to Prime, or (c) make exclusive to launch their own console.
And it seems like the sort of business Amazon likes: good profit margin trend line, but more valuable within the Amazon ecosystem than outside it.
Completely agree, there are synergies in these acquisitions, but it's also the breadth of them as well. Amazon has become a very broad business with vast distances between business units, but with a thread of related interested between them. Much like GE really, GE is routed in "old school" engendering, and thats the synergy that connects the relatively unrelated business it owns. For Amazon that synergy is the Internet, if it uses the internet then thats enough of a connection if the financials make sense.
Lots, but I always think of Wall-E with "Buy n Large" (https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Buy_n_Large), it seems to be so close to where Amazon will be in 100 years if we let it. Particularly if you include Blue Origin as part of "Bezos/Amazon".
You're trying to find a media reference, but conglomerates that do everything are already a thing; think of the Samsung group that does everything from heavy ship building to microchip manufacturing, insurance, advertising, and a theme park. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
They tried their own hand at making video games, leading to New World [0] and I believe a few other titles in the works. Limited success, and some massive technical flaws like allowing HTML in comments leading to remote code execution vulnerabilities. But also weird decisions, like simulating all the motions and physics of an axe hitting a tree server-side; that's just silly, all you need is a random success or failure coin flip. You can then do whatever you want with physics and such client-side.
This isn't Amazon "long term strategy", it's been their strategy from the very start.
They always wanted to be Sears but in the online world (who had their own credit card, Discover, their own branded product like Craftsman/Diehard/Kenmore/etc).
They also want to become more involved with live sport broadcasts (NFL and Premier League for example). EA has some major sport licenses (NHL, NFL, FIFA, PGA, F1, UFC)
FIFA they let go, because FIFA wanted to charge them $250m a year if I recall... FIFA wouldn't back down so eventually EA said they'd go out on their own, since they still have to license every specific league separately anyway.
Next year's EA soccer/football game is going to be called "EA Sports Football Club" "EA Sports: FC". It'll be a big gamble, but I think EA is betting that they'll save money in the long term even if they spend a ton on marketing.
I mention this because I wonder how much these sports licenses are worth after the video game is well established.
I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon are looking into the longer term Game subscription service, they already have a service for streaming called Luna similar to Stadia.
Stadia is fantastic but it lacks games.
A subscription service that streams games + allows access to it on dedicated gaming hardware such as a console/gaming PC is likely the market amazon wants to attack here.
This seems fairly broad on the surface, but they've always wanted to own products right as they go pure digital / online distribution. Kindle, prime video, FireTV, etc. I'll bet they feel video games are finally at that tipping point.
With all that impressive infrastructure to get physical product to you overnight or same day, it's still a better and much much more profitable platform for digital goods.
I suppose it makes sense, investors want their investment to be safe, by diversifying through acquisition they can give that to shareholders.
For the other rumoured purchasers, Disney and Apple, would have a direct affect on their business strategy. Disney as a media asset business, and Apple though the potential to expand their Gaming strategy on their own platforms.