Amazon added an “Indie Game Store” category to its downloadable game marketplace this week in order to help talented independent developers get their games noticed, Amazon’s Peter Heinrich writes in a blog post. The Indie Game Store offers developers a platform through which to publish their PC, Mac, and browser games while giving customers a tool to help discover new games. It includes initiatives like weekly developer interviews called “Indie Spotlight,” which are bundles of up to ten games sold together for $9.99, as well as special deals like free games with purchases, and “Indie Gamer’s Choice” polls that pit two games against one another in a popularity contest; the winner earns featured status in the store.
“Game development is an art, like any other,” Heinrich writes. “It can be personally rewarding, and like other forms of artistic expression, great games can come from anywhere. Powerhouse game studios don’t hold a monopoly on inventiveness or creativity, and some of the best games of all time were created on a shoestring by two or three people with a shared vision.”
It seems like Amazon isn’t turning anyone away. “We’ve been working really hard these past few months to make our process as easy as possible to get through,” Amazon’s digital games marketing manager Tony Valcarcel writes in a Reddit comment (via GI.biz). “In fact, in the past 3 months or so, we’ve been reaching out to everyone we can find to get more Indie Games on sale. Let me be 100% clear on this, we want to sell every functional Indie game available on the market and are building new processes and self service tools to make this even easier in the coming months.”
Amazon’s Indie Game Store arrives at an interesting time, as consumers await news of exactly how the next-gen Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will handle indie games. Sony recently added its own Indie Games section to the PlayStation Network store, but who knows what that will look like by the time the PS4 comes out later this year? Microsoft’s position, meanwhile, remains unclear.
Independent devs looking to get their games in the Amazon Indie Game Store should contact find-more-gamers@amazon.com.