Amazon preparing to launch its own cloud gaming competitor to Stadia and xCloud in 2020

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Google may have fluffed its lines with the Stadia launch but that doesn’t mean the push for game streaming is going to stop anytime soon. None of the big boys want to be the Blockbuster to somebody else’s Netflix so you can bet they’ll all keep trying until one strikes gold.

Next up to join Google Stadia, Xbox Game Streaming (Project xCloud) and PlayStation now would appear to be…. Amazon. That’s according to CNET, who claim they’ve got two inside sources which have confirmed Amazon’s plans to get into game streaming.

The plans sound suspiciously like Google’s own Stadia initiative. It’ll be led by the Amazon Web Services team and will offer game streaming which will be fully integrated into Twitch. Stadia will, eventually, maybe, be fully integrated into YouTube, insofar as users will be able to click and launch a game directly from a stream. Amazon’s Twitch integration sounds as if it’ll be much the same, although it may try the novel approach of actually having it ready for launch.

CNET claims Amazon’s game streaming will be ready to launch in 2020, the same year Xbox Game Streaming is due to launch and also when Stadia leaves Early Access.

Amazon certainly hasn’t found any success with its game initiatives thus far. A number of studios were set up, games announced and cancelled, but the only notable release it’s achieved so far was the truly awful The Grand Tour Game. Amazon meets Clarkson truly is the Pandora’s Box of the modern era.

First-party titles probably aren’t going to be the ‘system sellers’ Amazon craves then, but this hardly matters. Thanks to AWS (Amazon Web Services), Amazon is the biggest cloud service provider on the planet. No other company has stronger cloud infrastructure. Factor in the ubiquitous Amazon Prime subscription and, well, it’s easy to see the avenue down which Amazon could make cloud gaming a success.

As it currently stands though, there are a lot of huge companies trying to take bites out of what is still a very small pie. Cloud gaming, if it actually worked perfect, could be revelatory. Anything less than the native experience is going to bet with kickback though, so it remains to be seen which of the tech giants can master both streaming technology and content provision.

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Our Favorite Comments

“Pls no more of this cloud gaming BS, hope people dont buy this crap so it can die quickly in less than a year just like steam machines did.”

Manumunguia –

“Digital ownership ceases in 2020.Bit too edgy? I know. But I had to have some fun. ”

StevenPlebster –

“It needs to fail just so that we stop expanding into this "no ownership" and sharing economy…”

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