Amazon makes another move into Video Games after a flop

Amazon seemingly has its fingers in every pie of the gaming industry. If you want to watch your favorite gamers streaming? Twitch.tv is your way forward. Want a new MMO to play? Their massively multiplayer New World is due to be released to the world in 2021.

The only slice of action missing from Amazon’s current gaming portfolio is them taking a stab at creating some top slot games that you’d find at new slot sites online. Due to how impressive their media lineup is, some games like this don't seem completely out of the question.

Efforts by Amazon to break into the hugely profitable video gaming industry were hugely unsuccessful. But they are having a go at it again.

Prime Gaming was recently announced by Amazon, and it is basically a rebranded Twitch Prime service aimed at offering exclusive game content. It’s not been long since the firm removed its big-budget game named ‘Crucible’ from digital stores. They did that when they discovered that it did not create the level of impact they expected or garner the size of the audience they had in mind.

Twitch Prime offered people a Twitch subscription at no cost. Twitch is the live-streaming site co-owned by Amazon, where players can gain unique in-game equipment, free games from small studios, and discounts for bigger titles like League of Legends and Grand Theft Auto. Prime Gaming is expected to offer more benefits than Twitch, delivering more content and titles, and game enthusiasts can access it without the need for a Twitch account.

The director of Prime Gaming, Larry Plotnick, posited that it was in 2016 that the gaming service came into being, and it had Twitch’s name attached to it because of the popularity of Twitch among gamers at that time. However, at the moment, Amazon is now of the conviction that its name has garnered enough weight to market the service on its own.

Among the entire sectors in the global entertainment industry, gaming witnesses one of the fastest growth rates. Currently, 2.7 billion people projected to get involved this year according to information from the gaming market researcher, Newzoo. With the health crisis that kept many people at home for the greater part of this year, gaming witnessed a huge volume of growth, as people sought entertainment they can enjoy while indoors. Across the world, up to $160 billion is expected to be spent by gamers over the year.

Some other huge firms are also delving into gaming. In 2019, a video game subscription service named Apple Arcade was released by Apple, and a mobile gaming service named Stadia was also launched by Google. This year, a gaming app has just been introduced by Facebook.

Istock Gaming

In the past few years, Amazon has also made some efforts at gaming. The video game streamlining service or app was bought by Amazon for $970 million in 2014. However, in the recent past, its attempt at getting into the gaming sector fully did not materialize. It was in May that Amazon launched ‘Crucible,’ a multiplayer free to play shooter game created by Amazon Game Studios’ subsidiary. The game consumed millions of dollars and spent many years in the works.

The release of the game received heavy promotions and publicity, but it did not make the needed impact when it arrived. When the game was released, it was played by about 10,000 people simultaneously. But by the end of June last year, it averaged only 361 simultaneous players according to information from the analytics site, Steam Charts.

Amazon recently removed it from circulation and it is now impossible for any new player to join the game at the moment. The top developer of Crucible, Colin Johanson posited that this is an opportunity for the developers to effect changes in the game. He said that they will concentrate on making sure that players are given the best possible gaming experience if and when the game eventually shows up again.

Piers Harding-Rolls, a director of research in a London based analytics firm, Ampere Analysis, has said that game makers don't usually take games off circulation. According to the New York Times, he believes that the failure of crucible reveals that the video game industry is not an easy one to break into and that it is very difficult to please gamers. For him, what it shows is that in the gaming industry, nothing is a done deal.

(Disclaimer: Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)