Amazon updates hundreds of million of its own games but fails
Insiders reveal the high-profile fact that Amazon spends half a billion a year on games, with no result so far …
Amazon reportedly spends half a billion a year developing its own games. That is what insiders tell Bloomberg. The webshop giant may well be successful in just about every other form of entertainment; games are still a largely unknown glory for the American company.
Amazon spends $ 500 million on games
According to the anonymous insiders, Amazon spends hundreds of millions (more than € 414 million converted) every year on making its own games. However, so far without success. Or as the IndianExpress so nicely headlines: “Amazon can make just about anything, except a good video game.”
To be clear, the half-billion dollars isn’t for Twitch, their own game streaming service Luna, or any other projects; it is strictly about developing your own games. And we have hardly seen any of that so far.
Their first-ever title, Crucible, had been in development for years and was released in beta in May of 2020. A month later, the involved studio withdrew the beta. For several more months, Amazon announced that the game was being thrown in the trash. Breakaway and a League of Legends-like game were also developed and eventually scrapped.
As far as we know, one more game from Amazon remains and that is New World. Although the first images are beautiful and the concept is promising, last year the game was delayed to August 2020. Then the game was again postponed to sometime this year. In short, that doesn’t sound very positive either …
Tainted corporate culture
Now the constant flop of Amazon games has apparently nothing to do with the talent of the studios involved. Countless great people have been attracted from the industry over the years.
Instead, it would be corporate culture that caused gigantic projects like Crucible to fail. The insiders tell about the stubborn CEO Mike Frazzini, who is said to have consistently rejected good advice. He would have wanted to make every Amazon game a billion-dollar franchise, but then put far too few people on it.
It gets worse. Frazzini has no experience with games and has mainly worked with books in his career. During demos from his employees, he reportedly couldn’t distinguish the difference between concept images and actual gameplay; something anyone with basic knowledge of video games should be able to do.
In short, employees throw the CEO under the bus. While we can’t verify it, it could certainly explain Amazon’s giant flops. For the time being, all arrows are focused on New World, which has to explode early this year to be able to justify Amazon’s half billion.
