I feel that Amazon absolutely was positioned to do exactly that, but rather then have the focus and the will to make a real engine, they pivoted to a minimum viable product for a entirely run of the mill game and then was surprised when AAA studios weren't impressed with their big talk about the future.

If they would have held the initial course and built a world class engine, this could have actually changed the world.

But Amazon doesn't have the backbone anymore. They're afraid of making and sticking with the big bets. In a decade, I don't know that Amazon will be seen any differently then Google is today.

Tangentially related, I just recently found out that Lumberyard actually was spun out[1] into the open source Open 3D Engine[2] under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation. It's a nice surprise to see that Lumberyard didn't just die out, and is joining the ranks of open-source engines.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220614090421/https://aws.amazo...

[2]: https://o3de.org/