Amazon.com: Challenging Steam?

For the past few years, Amazon has allowed people to purchase and download software directly from their website. Even so, it’s gone widely unnoticed as the only software they’ve been doing this with is TurboTax, though they do offer a similar service for other forms of entertainment, such as ebooks, movies and music. Now it appears they’re looking to expand further, based on a job posting on Gamasutra, which states that they’re looking for a Software Development Engineer, specifically to build the foundation for a game distribution system.

Online game distribution isn’t anything new, and with over fifteen million people already using Steam, one has to wonder how steep of a climb Amazon has ahead of it to be competitive with the game distribution powerhouses already seeking to corner this lucrative market. Steam not only offers games from over a hundred and fifty publishers, ranging from big hitters including EPIC and SEGA, to innumerable indie publishers, as well as, of course, Valve’s own games, but they’ve also created tons of content specifically to help build the community amongst players. And Steam isn’t the only player in the game- see GameTap and EA.com.

One of Steam’s biggest competitive advantages is that it enables players to have game updates downloaded automatically, so that they don’t have to search for them or wait for interminable periods of time before game play for a patch. Amazon will have to develop this functionality in house or through a partnership with an automated, game update service like Raptr, to be competitive. Amazon has the boxed PC game selling clout, but it remains to be seen whether launching this new distribution platform is biting off more than this dotcom giant can chew.