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Here’s what Amazon’s Luna means for you

The other shoe dropped on Thursday — the one we’ve been expecting for a while: Amazon is jumping into the game streaming business. And it could quickly become a major player. 

What does the announcement mean for players, though? Ultimately, it could be a very good thing.

Amazon has one of the biggest cloud servers around — one utilized by Netflix and other big streaming services — so gamers won’t have to worry about stuttering or stalls.

That’s potentially bad news for Microsoft, which seemed poised to own game streaming with xCloud’s integration into Game Pass. Google’s Stadia has yet to capture a significant audience and doesn’t have much momentum at present. Luna is also reportedly much easier for developers to work with than Stadia.

Meanwhile, Sony has not shown a clear long-term road map for cloud gaming so far. 

Rather than jumping in with a stated intention to own the industry, Amazon’s starting small. Luna is downplaying the latest and greatest games and instead giving players access to a catalog of older games for $6 a month. That lets it work out bugs without ruining a highly anticipated title. And by the time more players are thinking of exploring Luna, it should be ready to stand up to the scrutiny of core gamers.

But even in the short-term, Luna appears to have some notable upsides. 

Connections

Amazon, like Google, is working on its own internal games, but those likely won’t be ready for a year or three. But as the world’s largest retailer, Amazon has the ear of every major game publisher. That could help secure limited-time exclusives (vs. xCloud and Stadia – publishers are unlikely to make any game a Luna exclusive anytime soon). It also could ensure a wider catalog of games than Stadia. 

Twitch

Integrating Luna into the Twitch community was a no-brainer, but using it as a discovery engine could drive customers just as strongly as Game Pass will bring them to xCloud. Twitch is also home to some of the industry’s biggest influencers, such as Ninja, who will undoubtedly be tapped to promote Luna and its games. That’s awareness a marketing budget can’t pay for. And, for players, it’s a chance to see what the service can really do before they commit to a subscription. 

True cross-compatibility

Amazon’s casting a wide net with Luna. The service will, of course, be available on all Amazon Fire TV devices, as well as PC and Mac. And it’s planning apps for the iPhone and iPad, areas neither xCloud nor Stadia have yet ventured. An Android version is forthcoming. 

That widespread availability will showcase the flexibility of cloud gaming — and could accelerate its adoption by players. 

Amazon Prime

This is the powder Amazon is keeping dry. The company regularly expands Amazon Prime benefits to lure more people to its loyalty program, and Luna, especially in its test period, could be a tempting piece of bait. (Similarly, it could tie in with Twitch Prime — or some future combined program.) How, if at all, Luna will factor into this year’s Prime Day is, of course, unclear, but it’s worth watching. 

Amazon didn’t make this move abruptly. The company has been quietly amassing gaming talent for years, including several former Take-Two employees. It has been a sleeping giant that many console manufacturers have been wary of waking. 

Now that nap is over. For players, it means another option that expands flexibility and could have an impact on pricing. For the game industry, it’s another step into a new world — where the rules and rulers — have not yet been written. 

Competition

There’s an old business cliche: A rising tide lifts all boats. Put another way: The more services that are bringing new people to the industry, the better.

Amazon’s entry in the market will make gaming a more competitive industry — and that could, ultimately, help save consumers money. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft will all aggressively court gamers to their cloud services over the next few years. They’ll be willing to take losses in hopes of buying customer loyalty. The next generation of games will be more expensive than the last one, so anything that can potentially cut into that pricing model is likely to be welcomed by players.

Chris Morris
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Chris Morris has covered consumer technology and the video game industry since 1996, offering analysis of news and trends and…
Dead Island 2’s Amazon Alexa voice commands are novel, but limited
Dani lights a cigarette as zombies attack her from behind in Dead Island 2 key art.

I’ve always found myself interested in new technologies that could possibly enhance how we play or experience games. Whether it’s a computing innovation like cloud gaming or new controller features like the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers, I love testing those things out. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to try Alexa Game Control during my recent hands-on preview experience with Dead Island 2.
When Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 finally launches on April 21, it will be the first game to support Alexa Game Control. By connecting one’s Amazon account to the game, players can use the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to perform in-game actions like taunting zombies or equipping their best weapons. I was curious to see just how deep this went, but after some hands-on time, this first implementation of it proved to be little more than a novelty.

Hey, Alexa
Dead Island 2 players can toggle Alexa Game Control on when they first show up in Bel-Air after the game’s opening. It has a dedicated tab in the Options Menu where players can choose to enable or disable it, choose whether they want it to work automatically or with push to talk, set the voice capture threshold, and decide which microphone they wish to use.
After enabling Alexa Game Control, I immediately noticed a ring at the bottom-left corner of the screen. When I spoke, this lit up with blue and teal colors, like the top ring on an Alexa device, and text confirming whether it could do the action or not would appear. Not having to say “Hey, Alexa” also means it implemented itself into the game smoothly. At first, I tried to see if voice commands would work for basic things like walking, jumping, and dodging, to no avail. After this, I hopped to a save I had placed later in the game and opened its tutorial menu to see what Alexa Game Control could really do.
Reading its tutorials and lists of commands, the limits of Alexa Game Control became clear. It mainly provides quick shortcuts to save you a button press or two in the middle of playing. In Dead Island 2, Alexa Game Control has four main uses: setting waypoints, taunting enemies, triggering emotes, and switching weapons. The tutorial menus give a complete list of commands that work, although each wildly varies in its usefulness.
Oi, zombie!
The funniest use of this voice technology in Dead Island 2 is taunting zombies. Shouting something like “Hey, dude” or “Oi, zombie” to get the attention of enemies that hadn’t detected me always made me chuckle. It’s also occasionally useful; at one point, I got a bunch of zombies to walk into a large pool of acid and die after taunting them. While it takes the same amount of time as walking up to the zombie to get their attention, I see the potential in voice technology that lets you interact with the world like this.

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You can now launch Game Pass, Luna titles through Google Search
Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming Service Enters Beta This Week

Google Search's newest feature lets players launch games straight from search results. On desktop and mobile, the "Play Now" option will appear for games that are on a supported cloud gaming service.

https://twitter.com/Google/status/1602756784954949634

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The Game Awards 2022: Here’s the complete list of winners
The Game Awards 2022 trophy art.

Elden Ring was crowned Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022 on Thursday night. It beat out God of War Ragnarok, which had garnered 10 nominations, the most for any game. God of War Ragnarok ended up with most wins, however, with six to Elden Ring's four.

Following is a complete list of winners:
Game of the Year

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