Amazon is building an elite team to enter a new market

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

Amazon Unveils Its First Smartphone
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos presents the company's first smartphone, the Fire Phone, on June 18, 2014 in Seattle, Washington.
Photograph by David Ryder — Getty Images

Amazon has its sights set on becoming the next big computer game maker, and it’s assembling a dream team to make it happen.

The e-commerce site run by Jeff Bezos has hired top talent in the video game industry, with more top developers expected to join to work on PC games, Business Insider reports. The information comes from an Amazon job ad placed on Gamasutra, a site for video game developers.

“Amazon is committed to gamers, and building great teams who are excited to use Twitch, the AWS cloud, and technical innovation to radically evolve gameplay,” the ad reads. “We believe that games have just scratched the surface in their power to unite players and will produce some of the future’s most influential voices in media and art.”

The ad also trumpets that Amazon’s team is already full of game developers with experience working on top-notch titles like Portal, World of Warcraft, BioShock, Half Life 2 ,Left for Dead, Dota 2, Halo, Infamous, Shadows of Mordor and The Last of Us. Amazon has already made a few mobile games, but it hasn’t done anything for full-blown desktops or consoles.