[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.)

[JshWright]

> crowded and low-margin market

Isn't that kind of Amazon's thing?

[benbristow]

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

[jccalhoun]

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.

[notatoad]

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.

[falsedan]

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...

[dharma1]

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

[benbristow]

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/

[dharma1]

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

[Slippery_John]

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