I tried it for one day, and yeah, it’s no Battleborn (I liked Battleborn).
It’s a shame Battleborn never went free to play.
Indeed, it was such a fun game.
You have to wonder why Bezos hasn’t killed this effort yet.
“Un-releasing” a game is certainly an interesting by-product of the digital world we live in these days.
Good article about both Amazon and Google’s initial face-plant attempts at getting into gaming.
As a result, we will be changing our launch date - and correspondingly, our final beta test - to spring 2021.
That’s a smart move. No need for a studio with deep pockets to rush a game out the door. Can I say if I am in the alpha or not? Well, let’s just say I agree it needs 6 more months of work. Beta starting in 2 weeks made no sense. Let’s see how things look in Spring 2021.
After the Crucible debacle the last thing Amazon’s Game Studios need is another flop to make the upper executives second guess why they started this thing in the first place.
Or they could just go the amazon route, flood the market at low cost until everyone else is run out of business.
These guys will be shut down soon. They’ll run out of runway. It’s not like they can keep a scam going like Star Citizen.
I don’t think I understand your point here. Are you saying this is a scam? It might be a waste of money in the end and it might result in some poor games, but I don’t see how it’s a scam in any way like Star Citizen. Pretty sure these guys will actually deliver a playable game.
The alpha is a real game that lasted for months. They were a few weeks from beta, and they now will use that time for a pre-beta play test that will get lots more players. Its not a scam, it just needs more time for middle and end game content, and I would also suggest a more focused and better executed vision.
The argument isn’t that it’s a scam, but that unlike Star Citizen, which will keep going as long as people keep throwing money at it, Amazon isn’t going to keep throwing good money after bad to keep Amazon Game Studios around until they get a successful game out there.
Bezos didn’t turn an online bookstore into a trillion dollar company by being dumb. Eventually (if he hasn’t already) he’s going to send one of his feared “?” emails to the person in charge of the Game Studio.
I do believe that Amazon, like Google, is trying to come at this Cloud Gaming thing backward. Since AWS is a monster part of Amazon’s revenue now, they’ll keep at it. But eventually Bezos is going to want to see results, and by that I mean good ones.
Sure, nobody thinks Bezos will keep throwing money down a black hole forever. So the game will have to deliver something that can be termed a success or it will undoubtedly be axed. But if anyone has the ability to take a longer view, it seems like it’d be Amazon (on the other hand, they could turn out to be like Google and fund 8 bajillion projects into beta and then cancel them all after a year +/- 9 months).
Having lots of money not only allows you to fund lots of projects and keep them going, but it also allows you to kill projects that don’t look like they’re going to pan out after you’ve spent a ton of money on them. Lots of studios hit that magical 51% sunk cost milestone and figure it’d cost less to just finish it up and put it out.
The intent of Lumberyard - the game engine based on Crytek at the heart of Amazon’s game efforts - is to drive AWS sales in the game industry. By providing a top tier engine for free which requires AWS services Amazon is looking to lock in build long term relationships with developers.
The problem is the same as any new / niche game engine. Tools are hard to build. Good tools are even harder. The one game that Amazon actually shipped - the Grand Tour arcade racer - is a headache to add new art assets to. That’s was a huge problem for a game which was supposed to have weekly updated in concert with the episodes appearing on Prime Video.
Anyway, all the game development is a loss leader for AWS. They’d like them to be good, but they don’t have to be great. Just show off what you can do with Lumberyard and AWS.
It’s just bizarre that they chose CryEngine for Lumberyard. CryEngine has never been known as developer-friendly.
Amazon could have easily dropped (to them) a tiny amount of cash (but a massive amount to everyone else), hired elite talent, and built an engine for their purposes.
Well, maybe Blue Origin