Online shopping giant Amazon (AMZN) is constantly looking for ways to improve its operations and maintain its status at the top of the online shopping heap. It may have found one with a kind of augmented reality glasses tool for its delivery drivers, but investors are not so sure. In fact, investors sent shares slipping fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading.
The idea is actually somewhat familiar. Amazon’s new glasses, once they are ready for prime time, will offer drivers turn-by-turn navigation displayed right in their field of vision. The directions will apparently be so precise that they will work to provide directions to turn when coming off an elevator or around known hazards like a gate. This should bolster efficiency, if only slightly, but add up over the course of days or even weeks.
But the glasses may never see the light of day, noted a CNBC report, which said that the glasses may take “years” to be made ready, and any intervening financial issues between here and there may shutter the project altogether. In fact, such a plan may run afoul of the law; attempts to use augmented reality with driving directions on car windshields have met with concern over distracted driving, and it stands to reason displays in glasses will meet a similar fate.
Prime Video Will Be Home to a Mass Effect Series
Separately, for science fiction buffs, Amazon has some more welcome news. Amazon Prime Video will be home to a Mass Effect series. The series, which places humanity in a future in which intragalactic travel is a lot easier thanks to so-called “mass effect relays,” was a long-standing video game series that produced four titles.
There were plans for a movie tie-in from Legendary Pictures, but those failed to materialize. Now, Amazon has put the Mass Effect series into active development, which will feature such names as Daniel Casey from 10 Cloverfield Lane, Cedar Tree Productions’ Karim Zreik, and Spider-Man legend Avi Arad.
And with another Mass Effect game in the works from BioWare, we may be in for a lot of exciting sci-fi action in the near term. Video game tie-ins have done quite well recently; consider the Fallout series, the Twisted Metal series, and the various Sonic the Hedgehog incarnations.
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 44 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 44.57% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $238.35 per share implies 15.63% upside potential.
