Amazon Prime is now available in Australia

Overnight Amazon Australia launched Amazon Prime for the local market. What’s Amazon Prime? It’s a monthly paid for service that includes a number of benefits, and it could mean a big deal in the e-commerce scene in Australia (and for you know, gamers).

The Australian version of Prime includes the following benefits;

• Two-Day domestic delivery to eligible locations
  • 90% of Australia is covered (full list of locations)
  • Release-Date Delivery for games, music and more (get the game on the release date, not after)
• Free delivery on items from Amazon US over $49
• Streaming TV and movies from Amazon Prime Video
• 1000 eBooks a month on rotation
• Twitch Prime (free games, loot and no ads on Twitch)

Because it’s new there’s a free trial for a month, after that and until January 31st, 2019 it’ll cost just $4.99 a month. The normal price is $6.99 a month.

While Amazon Australia has been underwhelming in a lot of ways since launching (and we’re losing access to the US site) this actually looks pretty attractive.

Amazon has been very aggressive in matching not only local stores but also the likes of OzGameShop. More recently they’ve even matched the eShop and its sales. Combined with release date delivery (or two-day delivery in general) it’s looking very tempting. It’s always a risk buying from a store online, especially when a lot of Nintendo games release on a Friday or Saturday.

Let’s see if all of the above works in practice, Prime is huge in America – but Australia is huge. Can they really deliver (literally and figuratively).