Amazon is making video games now

It seems Amazon isn't satisfied with just selling video games -- it also wants to create them, and the retailer announced today that it's launched a brand new division to help it do just that. The new branch, known as Amazon Game Studios, has just debuted Living Classics, a new hidden object game on Facebook that references popular books such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and King Arthur. Amazon says Living Classics is just the first of many games to come from the new division. The company did not specify, however, whether it plans to target any platforms beyond Facebook. Before the official debut of Amazon Games Studios, Amazon had quietly dabbled in game development with small-scale casual titles such as The Great Tree and Matches & Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale. Those previous games came from casual game developer Reflexive, which Amazon purchased back in 2008. Amazon did not mention whether Reflexive is involved at all with its new development team. Last month, Amazon also set out to make its Kindle Fire hardware more game friendly by launching GameCircle, a new set of achievement-based and community features much like those seen on Apple's Game Center or Gree's Openfeint.