Amazon will acquire the rest of Lovefilm

Online retail giant Amazon brought an end to months of speculation by announcing that it was to buy DVD-to-games rental and download service LOVEFiLM.

Amazon already owns a 42% minority stake in LOVEFiLM International, which operates in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. It will now buy the remaining 58% share for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of this year and may mean international expansion for LOVEFiLM in line with Amazon’s own European operations.

LOVEFiLM, which has been operating for seven years, offers its 1.6m members a choice of more than 70,000 titles via DVD, Blu-ray, video games, and digital streaming through the LOVEFiLM player, which is used through the PC, PlayStation3 and streamed direct to TV.

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The "Netflix of Europe"? LOVEFiLM streaming content available on PS3

LOVEFiLM's streamed content (about 5,000 titles) has been available on Sony BRAVIA® and Samsung Internet @ TV HDTVs and Blu-ray players in the U.K.. Now, this content is available on PlayStation 3 game consoles, expanding LOVEFiLM's potential footprint to about three million homes.

LOVEFiLM offers a subscription service starting from £5.99 (€6.80) a month. PlayStation users will be able to access the service via the console’s XMB menu system. Lovefilm is set to launch on the console in November.