Amazon Pushes Into Making Video Games, Not Just Streaming Their Play

The Irvine studio is also developing a massively multiplayer game based on the “Lord of the Rings” franchise. John Smedley, a former president of Sony Online Entertainment, joined Amazon in 2017 to start a third internal Amazon game studio in San Diego, but his new project has not been revealed.

With these in-depth online games, Amazon is going after hard-core players, who are typically the most demanding in the world.

If Crucible and New World succeed, Amazon will not only build a consumer games business but also show the potential of its technology tools. The company has developed a game processing engine called Lumberyard and hopes to harness the power of its cloud computing services to deliver innovative online experiences, such as huge multiplayer battles in New World.

Mr. Frazzini, Amazon’s game chief, transferred from the company’s book division to its retail game segment in 2009. He quickly spotted an opportunity for Amazon to start marketing cloud computing services to game developers and begin the journey toward making top-end games of its own. He said persuading Amazon to lean into video games hadn’t been difficult.

“It was very clear to everyone that people, customers, love video games,” he said. “It was so obviously important to customers that we need to be doing something.”

Crucible, a team-based combat game, borrows elements from “battle arena” games like League of Legends and Dota 2 to give the typical shooter formula more strategic depth. Louis Castle, a longtime games executive hired by Amazon to run Relentless, said Crucible had been redesigned many times since its inception in 2014, coming to focus on competitive online play and live-streaming on Twitch.

“It’s the active involvement of hundreds and hundreds of people over very long periods of time that gets to a great product,” Mr. Castle said, crediting Amazon’s deep pockets for underwriting patience with the Crucible team. “Thankfully, we’re with a company that has the resources to let this new team fully gel and get a great expression out there.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/technology/amazon-making-video-games.html