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twoquestions·

I wonder why Amazon is going after game developers, as the gaming industry looks like a crowded and low-margin market.

Not to mention the free to try and mature tools that developers already have (Unity, Unreal Engine, etc.)

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> crowded and low-margin market

Isn't that kind of Amazon's thing?

The cloud service offerings. They can make a killing off of hosting the game servers and backend APIs.

That and to get people into their ecosystem. Make a game that runs on their firestick and a user might stick around to use Amazon Prime and rent a movie or something.

That seems like a bit of a stretch. CryEngine isn't going to run on a Firestick or a cheap tablet, it's a full-on game engine meant for desktop computers or consoles, not mobile gaming.

run games on spot instance g2s & stream them to the sticks, ala http://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-own...

wouldn't it make more sense to focus on AWS offerings for Unity3D/Unreal Engine instead?

As far as I know Amazon are going to start making their own games as well. Makes sense to use their own engine so they don't have to share any profits.

https://games.amazon.com/

Ah, that explains why. And they might have some VR plays in mind, where it makes sense to have an engine they control

Well, since GameLift is engine agnostic you could use it in any engine, it would just not be so tightly integrated.

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