Amazon wants to introduce as many people as possible to the concept of cloud gaming, something the tech titan has been working on for some time. The Amazon Luna service is the solution, but the adoption of the platform has been lacklustre since it launched over four years ago.
To address that fact, Amazon has now bundled Luna with Prime Video, but there are some big catches to that deal. First, you’ll need to be a customer in the United States or the United Kingdom, and you’ll need to use the service on a Fire TV.
A Good Deal, If You Fit The Bill
In a statement, the GM of Gaming at Amazon, Jeff Gattis, addressed the move that has now made Luna a part of Prime Video:
For a lot of people, games have been harder to find than they should be. Bringing Luna inside Prime Video allows Prime members to discover games more naturally, and if they see one they like, they click it, and they’re in. That’s less time searching and more time playing great games included with their Prime membership.
Cloud gaming adoption has been slow over the last few years because the infrastructure isn’t really there to support it yet. Even in the most developed countries in the world, consistently high and stable internet provisions aren’t as common as you might think, which hampers the evolution of cloud-based gaming solutions.
Amazon’s Jeff Gattis now thinks things have developed enough that the technology can support gaming in the cloud:
The technology’s only getting better.
Several years ago, you would notice latency in certain people’s connections, and you just weren’t getting the fidelity that you needed. A lot of that has been removed. So now it’s almost like you have to rebuild trust in people who had a bad cloud experience five years ago.
(Thanks to IGN for the quote)
Luna being brought into Prime is all about discoverability, making it much easier for customers to find new experiences that they can leap right into at the press of a button. It’s also a trick to allow multimedia opportunities to flourish.
Let’s say you want to watch the Fallout television show, which is exclusive to Prime Video. Well, if you enjoy it enough, you’ll be there and ready to boot up a game like Fallout: New Vegas, which is available on the Luna service, from your Prime Video interface.
Do you think cloud gaming is ready for more customers? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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