We now know a little more about Amazon’s push in video games: the tech giant plans to release its first big-budget video games next month, is developing Twitch interactive experiences and has a gaming platform. in the cloud called Project Tempo in preparation.
In a large interview with the New York Times, Amazon executives revealed a few more snippets of these projects, aimed at attracting more people to the Amazon ecosystem that already covers everything from cloud storage to speakers intelligent.
Not all of this is new – Amazon announced that the development of games like Crucible and New World started in 2016, while rumors of a cloud gaming service have been swirling for over a year.
However, the NYT article supplemented some of this information. The video game streaming service is apparently codenamed Project Tempo, and a first version could be launched at some point this year – assuming the coronavirus epidemic does not interfere. Details are scarce at the moment, but it’s likely to look like Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce Now.
Next launch
As for the sci-fi themed first-person shooter Crucible and the massively multiplayer online game New World (which we’ve already reviewed), both are slated to launch next month. The spread of Covid-19 delayed the launch of Crucible, originally scheduled for March.
The NYT confirms that there is also another MMO in the works, as announced last year, which will be based on the world of The Lord of the Rings. Amazon has developed its own Lumberyard game processing engine to support all of these efforts, which we’ve also heard of before.
Finally, the article discusses the interactive experiences that could potentially happen on the Twitch platform (owned by Amazon), so viewers can join the action they are watching. This could be rolled out in the coming months.
If the global economy and health allow, it looks like 2020 is a big year for Amazon in the gaming world, as it seems to be tackling Sony, Microsoft, Google, and the rest of that space seriously. As soon as one of these projects goes online, you will hear about it here.
