Amazon releases first mobile game to Appstore, rival platforms

Amazon's in-house game studio has published its first mobile title to not just its mobile Appstore, but also to Android's Google Play and iOS's App Store. Available or free (with microtransactions for additional content), Air Patriots shows of a number of features available on the Appstore (Amazon's mobile marketplace for the Kindle Fire and Android devices), such as Whispersync cloud saves and Game Circle achievements/leaderboards. Similar to Amazon's strategy with its Kindle ebook reading app, which is available on both Kindle devices and the smartphones/tablets of its competitors, the company has released the Lemon Team-developed Air Patriots on rival app marketplaces. It's an unconventional move because game platform owners like Nintendo and Sony tend to release first-party games to their systems exclusively. With this strategy, though, Amazon can build some first-hand experience on the difficulties developers deal with when creating multiplatform mobile games, and then apply those lessons to improve its Appstore. This is the second release from Amazon Game Studios, following the developer's Living Classics release for Facebook in August. That title hasn't really caught on, though, and currently has only 140,000 monthly active players.