Amazon has been very successful with their e-commerce services, but the company owned by Jeff Bezos has continued to expand into various sectors in recent years, from digital streaming to video games. But it seems that when it comes to gaming, Amazon doesn’t have a clear director yet.
According to reports from journalists BloombergTwo sources he interviewed said that Amazon had spent nearly “$ 500 million per year” on their gaming division and had not yet counted Twitch and their cloud gaming services, and so far it has not produced any concrete results.
The only game they have released so far is The Crucible and it didn’t last long. After just a few months of release, the game was immediately pulled back into closed beta before finally being shut down completely due to lack of players.
Apart from Crucible, Amazon has reportedly canceled many projects, one of which is the sports fantasy game project Breakaway and many projects that have not been announced to the public.
They also developed another game called New World which originally wanted to be released in August 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They are also co-developers of the MMO game The Lord of The Ring, but until now there is no latest information.
Amazon has recruited many experienced developers ranging from Kim Swift (Portal), Clink Hocking (Far Cry 2), and many more. However, their experience and skills were not utilized because division chairman Mike Frazzini was said to be a person with “no experience in the gaming world”. He was said to be sticking to metrics for making decisions rather than asking for advice from experienced developers he recruited.
Many other problems were mentioned in the article ranging from a lack of incentives to work, a “bro culture” impression that made female employees feel uncomfortable and cared for, and their own so-called Lumberyard Engine was full of problems, making game development ineffective. You can read more of this information directly at Bloomberg.
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