After a flop, Amazon rebrands to make a name in video games
BERKELEY, Calif. — Amazon stumbled as it worked to break into the lucrative video game industry. Now it’s trying again.
On Monday, Amazon announced Prime Gaming, which is essentially a rebranding of its Twitch Prime service that provides exclusive game content. The move comes just over a month after the company pulled its original big-budget game, “Crucible,” from digital store shelves after it was panned as a “hollow and forgettable experience.”
With Twitch Prime, people got a free subscription to Twitch, the Amazonowned livestreaming site, with free games from small studios and unique, ingame equipment and discounts for larger titles like “Grand Theft Auto” and “League of Legends.” Prime Gaming will expand those benefits and offer more titles and content, but will no longer require a Twitch account to access.
Larry Plotnick, Prime Gaming’s director, said the gaming service started in 2016 with Twitch’s name attached because it was wellknown among gamers. But he said Amazon now believes that its own name carries significant weight.
“We felt very strongly that to support our game developers as partners, as well as to reach the most customers, the Prime Gaming brand creates a lot more value in that ecosystem,” he said.
Plotnick declined to say how many people have joined Twitch Prime; he said it was one of the fastest-growing parts of Amazon Prime.
Gaming is one of the biggest global entertainment industries, with 2.7 billion people projected to play a game this year, according to gaming market researcher Newzoo. Growth has accelerated with the coronavirus pandemic forcing people to stay indoors and seek online entertainment, and gamers worldwide are expected to spend nearly $160 billion this year.
Other large companies are also making inroads into gaming. Last year, Apple released a video game subscription service called Apple Arcade, and Google debuted a mobile gaming service called Stadia. This year, Facebook introduced a gaming app.
Amazon has been getting into games over the past few years, too. In 2014, it bought Twitch, which is used mostly to stream video games, for $970 million.
But its most recent attempt to become a big player in gaming flopped. In May, Amazon launched “Crucible,” which was a free-to-play multiplayer shooter game produced by a subsidiary of Amazon Game Studios. The game was years and millions of dollars in the making.
Yet after a heavily promoted release, gamers did not bite. Numbers for “Crucible” quickly dropped off a cliff; about 10,000 people were playing the game at the same time when it first launched, but it averaged only 361 simultaneous players in June, according to analytics site Steam Charts.
Amazon pulled “Crucible” from circulation last month.