The first games from Amazon Game Studios are aimed squarely at the MOBA crowd

Not content with conquering online shopping markets, dominating eBook sales or bringing its digital companion into our homes, Amazon’s next venture is into the world of video games. The company has invented a new 3D gaming engine, Lumberyard, and it's giving it to developers for free. This is a shrewd move by Amazon that's sure to have raised some eyebrows. By offering it for free, it ties developers in to the Amazon ecosystem, which now includes the Twitch broadcasting service as well as Amazon’s AWS Cloud network.

Questions remain about whether Lumberyard will be as cutting edge as Unity or EA DICE’s beautiful Frostbite engine. As if in answer, Amazon has revealed the first three AAA games to be released by its new Amazon Game Studios in 2017.

Breakaway

If you like your fast-action sports brawlers, then Breakaway might leave your jaw on the floor. It takes legends from all time periods – like slave-turned-gladiator Spartacus, Camelot witch Morgan Le Fay, or the man behind the Dracula legend, Vlad the Impaler – and throws them against one another in a 4v4 battle. Journey to the lost city of Atlantis, El Dorado or the banks of the River Styx as you and your team fight through the arenas to win control of the coveted Relic.

New World

For its second game, Amazon Game Studios is tackling the MMO crowd with a game that's also got a hint of the Dark Souls series about it. New World opens in the cursed lands of 17th century America, but in this alternate vision of history, the supernatural is real. Amazon has promised that the game’s landscape will alter based on seasons, weather and time of the day. Although it's been vague on details, it does suggest that players will be able to form strategic alliances, or go it alone and explore this monster-riddled sandbox.

Crucible

Crucible is similar to Breakaway, in that it pits teams of players against one another, here extended to 6v6 play. The third-person shooter sees the 12 players enter a hostile alien landscape, forced to fight for survive à la The Hunger Games. Amazon has also promised some MOBA elements, but the most exciting twist is that players can switch teams mid-game. The game is also hitching its wagon to Twitch in a big way. A thirteenth player can join the fray – they're directly responsible for broadcasting the game live and creating events to cause drama, where Twitch viewers can interact with the game master to suggest ways to manipulate the state of play.

Amazon is offering alpha and beta access to all of these titles via TwitchCon. While it hasn't revealed the system requirements for all of these games, since it's targeting the AAA market, expect Lumberyard to require some horsepower. If the games are half as pretty as Amazon insists, you'll want to have a high-end gaming machine, to render them on. With an NVIDIA GTX 1070 powering either a 4K or Full-HD display with 120Hz refresh rate, it will soon show how Lumberyard performs in the field.

 

By Andrew Rainnie