How Amazon is muscling into entertainment

Amazons want to be an entertainment giant.

During Amazon's first quarter alone, the company released its long-rumored Fire TV, a $99 TV streaming and casual gaming device, unveiled its first video game courtesy of Amazon Game Studios, and inked a major deal with HBO that gives its Prime Instant Video service rights to older HBO shows such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire.

"We get our energy from inventing on behalf of customers, and 2014 is off to a kinetic start," CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.

A portion of the new catalog likely stems from the recent HBO deal. Amazon has also invested heavily in original content creation via its Hollywood arm. In the short-term, it's easy to think of Prime Video as a Netflix competitor, the former gaining ground on the latter company with new distribution deals and original content.

But Prime Video is just one piece in a bigger plan. Amazon wants to create an entertainment experience that's so compelling it can't be ignored. It wants to offer original and exclusive content streamed via Amazon services and served up on slickly-designed Amazon hardware, so competitively priced that few competitors can keep up.