Amazon Prime members won't have to pay for 'premium' Alexa skills

If you aren't ponying up for Prime, but are smitten with the game, those half-dozen hints will run you $1.99 a month, and you can subscribe to them directly within the skill itself. Developers beyond Sony Pictures Television won't have access to the skill-subscription tools just yet, but Amazon says it'll let you know when that's ready. Like TechCrunch notes, this is interesting for a few reasons; app subscriptions themselves, and how they'll potentially shape the future of the Alexa business model chief among them. Tying the subscription to a Prime membership is a bit odd too when you consider that an Echo device is kind of pointless without a Prime subscription as it is. Amazon is still working on a revenue split for developers, too, and told Engadget that it hasn't finalized its revenue sharing model for that.