Amazon

Amazon is making a play to bring esports to the casual market, with a new tournament centred on mobile and casual games.

The Champions of Fire event is centred on games available on the Amazon Appstore. The company describes it as its "first-ever casual mobile game eSports tournament—where 16 of the world's biggest celebrity game streamers will battle across five of its most popular casual mobile games for their share of a $100,000 cash prize pool."


Don't go firing up your smartphones in hope of getting a slice of that prize pot though. The event is an invitational, with esports notables including Boxbox, ProfessorBroman, Northernlion, Brian Kibler, and lolRenaynay already set to compete. Contestants will battle it out in a single-elimination format competition.

The games featured will be 8-Ball Pool, Bloons TD Battles Mobile, Disney Crossy Road, Fruit Ninja Tournament Edition, and Pac-Man 256. Not all of these allow versus play, so elimination may be determined by ranked performance.

"Competitive video gaming has seen huge growth, and we see tremendous customer value in expanding the tournament experience to include the casual mobile games played by millions of people today," said Aaron Rubenson, director of the Amazon Appstore, via statement. "The Champions of Fire Invitational will see some of the top gaming pros square off in the same fun games our customers can download and enjoy today from the Amazon Appstore."

While you can't take part, you can attend. Amazon is running Champions of Fire as a live event with Esports Productions in Las Vegas. The whole event will also be streamed on Amazon Appstore's Twitch page, from 10pm December 2 – 5am December 3, UK time.

As an invitational, this is largely a promotional tournament, but if this inaugural event proves a success, expect to see a potentially significant expansion in future years. Esports is indeed a growing sector and mobile games are a largely untapped area for it. If Amazon open the field to more players than just those invited this year, Champions of Fire could become a major new avenue for the field.