Amazon.com announced the launch of its new online store which offers more than 600 titles. The games are available for prices between $6.99 and $9.99 and there are also three titles given away for free (Jewel Quest II, Build-a-lot, and The Scruffs) - which will be downloadable without any costs for one week.

Each one of the games included in the company’s offer can be played for 30 minutes before deciding to purchase it. The format is somehow similar to the one presented by Yahoo Games and also Valve’s Steam service, even though there are several differences.

Just two months ago, Amazon acquired Reflexive Entertainment, which is a casual-game service, that used to sell its titles with its own DRM solution and store front. This was one of the first steps needed for starting this project.

"We're very excited to be entering this space," said Greg Hart, Amazon's vice president of video games and software, in an interview with Gamasutra. He also added that "The intent of that [Reflexive.com] purchase is what you're going to see... to take their catalog of games... from companies across the casual game space, and offer them to our customers. We think that the demographic is a great fit for Amazon's customer base."

The online game store is just the first beta version, which is why many more titles are expected over the next few months and the company annonced that all feedback received from its users will be analyzed in order to make the store even better.