Image courtesy Amazon

Amazon to Begin Selling VR Apps Through New HTC Partnership

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Jul 10, 2018

Amazon will soon begin selling VR apps on its massive digital marketplace through a new partnership with HTC.

While Steam generally functions as the Vive’s defacto app store, HTC runs its own VR app store called Viveport. The company’s partnership with Amazon will allow customers to buy Viveport apps directly on the Amazon marketplace.

Developers can opt-in to making their app available for sale through Amazon via the Viveport developer console, and customers will be able to make purchases starting in “a few weeks.”

“The new partnership supports Viveport’s mission to provide developers with the most avenues to monetize their content and reach new customers. In addition, consumers will have a new way to discover and purchase titles on Amazon. By linking their Viveport account, users will be able to purchased titles that will seamlessly be added to their Viveport library,” the company announced today.

Other details are thin at present, but this won’t be Amazon’s first rodeo for selling apps. The company began running its own Android app store in 2011 to capture revenue from Google’s Play app store and to reduce the company’s reliance on Google for its own ‘Fire’ tablets.

Amazon's VR/AR Creation Tool 'Sumerian' Now Available to General Public

In this case Amazon isn’t creating its entire own VR app store, but rather acting as a distribution extension of Viveport. But the partnership with HTC affirms the company’s growing interest in VR. The move also reinforces the rift between HTC and Valve, where the two companies have competing VR app stores despite cooperating on the hardware front.

impurekind

Nice. Any way that more people get to see and hear about VR the better it is.
- Sandy Wich
  
  Yea, it looks like VR has an uphill battle to fight and it’s going to be all about the eventual, universal support from all platforms in order to get VR the mainstream appeal it really deserves.
  
  It really saddens me it’s taking this long for VR to become a big deal, but as long as we keep seeing it move forward in sales/technology/software/availability all the better I say.
  
  This is a boon for VR enthusiasts.
  - impurekind
    
    It’s not taking that long: Consumer VR tech has only been out for a couple of years at this point. Most popular technologies took waaay longer to hit mainstream adoption than a couple of years. So VR is doing just fine, but I still want to see it getting as mush media time and exposure as possible just to make sure everything goes smoothly.
    - Sandy Wich
      
      Yea that’s true, it has only been a thing for a couple years. It’s just that it’s so amazing idk how more people aren’t getting into it.
      
      I honestly thought when Oculus Go launched it would be a landslide of interest.
      - impurekind
        
        I think even Oculus Go is maybe still a bit too expensive for what it is offering, but not by too much. If it was a full 6DoF headset + full 6Dof controllers though, and was also the same level of quality of current PC VR games too, with a decent battery life as well, then I think it might have been a much bigger hit. But that will all happen in time, and probably not too much time at that. . . .
      - nipple_pinchy
        
        It’ll get there. Mobile VR is what will transform the medium into being accessible for a mainstream audience. Like you said, it just has to be 6dof HMD/controllers with a good battery life.
Dorothy Jean Thompson

Ooo if I buy games through amazon I wonder if ill get 5% back…. (Amazon rewards card)
- oompah
  
  rather pay more as ‘prime’ customer
  to make the bald man get richer & richer
  till no rich man exists on the planet
  - Dorothy Jean Thompson
    
    I really don’t understand your reply.
    - nipple_pinchy
      
      I think he hates rich people or something. *shrugs*
  - nipple_pinchy
    
    *cricket noises*
oompah

Cant beat Steam
(but what I dont like on Steam is :
CRAZY ADVERTIZING
even for paid apps that makes u like
smashing ur h/w)
- BB
  
  What advertising is there on Steam? You know you can turn off the welcome banner in Settings right?
  - oompah
    
    oh I forgot to write updates
    crazy updates
    once u have bought a game
    whay it needs to be updated everyday
    taking up 15 minutes out of ur 60 minutes
    of daily free time
    - Morfium
      
      You can turn off updates individually for each game. And the updates itself are not made my steam, but the devs for each game. I have several hundred games and I have ~4 updates a week. Maybe you have lots of early access stuff.
care package

Not sure I’d really call it a ‘partnership’. More like:
HTC: hey Amazon, we want to sell our games on Amazon
Amazon: Please find the ‘seller’ option and fill out the forms.
nipple_pinchy

I use Amazon all the time–too much, I think–so this is great news. I love VR and I love Amazon. My wallet weeps in terror!
Simon Vermette

That’s nice because I’m Amazon Prime member so I’ll get free shipping.
Maria White

Interesting news. I think in the near future, data on Amazon sellers will be useful, thanks to sellerdirectories. A really good opportunity to explore the market and enter the niche in time. I hope everything will work out for me, the most important thing is to correctly evaluate the information received and draw the right conclusions.