Amazon's Gaming Strategy: A New Focus Amidst Diversified Efforts

Amazon’s gaming strategy has never really been clear. It’s been very active in the space: acquiring Twitch, launching its Luna cloud gaming service nearly six years ago, investing heavily in MMOs during the peak of live-service wave, and having access to a huge slate of franchises through Prime Video and the MGM Studios library. Late last year, the company announced a major pivot, relaunching Luna with a focus on party games you can play with just your phone as a controller — including an AI-powered game starring Snoop Dogg as a judge — and basically jumping ship on MMOs.

At the time, it looked like a retreat, but Amazon says that isn’t the case. “The reality is nothing could be further from the truth, but we haven’t really got out and said that,” Jeff Gattis, the GM of Amazon Games, tells The Verge. And while the company says it has a new, more focused strategy in place, its gaming efforts are still spread across several different pillars.

Part of that newfound focus comes from a structural change, as the company now has what it believes is a simpler approach. “Luna is our gaming platform, Amazon Game Studios is our development and publishing platform,” Gattis says. He acknowledges that it’s not “entirely unlike” the approach at Xbox, which has an Xbox platform division and Xbox Game Studios. And given Amazon’s push for cloud-streamed party games you can play on just a phone, Gattis is aware of the similarities to Netflix’s strategy, too — which has also had its twists and turns. Until recently, Amazon has tried to go after “core” gamers, but Gattis says that part of the market is “well-served” by things like PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. Amazon isn’t abandoning that group, but it also sees an opportunity to appeal to a more casual audience.

Gattis joined Amazon in March 2025 after many years as an exec at Xbox. Gattis says he came to Amazon because he saw a lot of opportunity. “I, for one, fail to accept that Amazon, as one of the largest consumer entertainment companies in the world, can’t break into the number-one revenue segment of consumer entertainment,” he says. Since he joined, Amazon consolidated its three separate gaming groups — Prime Gaming, Amazon Game Studios, and Luna — into one organization. “None of these groups were working with one another,” Gattis says.

For Luna, a select batch of games are included with an Amazon Prime subscription (including its GameNite party games) and you can pay $9.99 per month for Luna Premium, which has a bigger selection of titles. As for Amazon Game Studios, its biggest known games in the works are the remake Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, a new entry in the series. Both are currently set to launch in 2027. And Amazon’s involvement with games extends to a live-action Tomb Raider show for Prime Video starring Sophie Turner as Lara Croft.

Amazon’s bet on putting Tomb Raider everywhere — there are also a handful of titles available through Luna — indicates where the company sees things going. “We really believe that this line between TV and video games is increasingly coming together” such that “I think every major IP is going to have to have a video game story” as part of its go-to-market strategy, Gattis says. He also points to Amazon’s rights deals with sports leagues like the NBA and the NFL, saying there are “all kinds” of “companion-type games” that it can make.

Now that Amazon has creative control over James Bond, that seems like another obvious franchise for the company to build more games around, especially after the success of IO Interactive’s recently-released 007 First Light. IO Interactive self-published First Light because of a deal worked out before Amazon took over the franchise, though Amazon has a “stake in the game” and the company is talking with IO about when to bring it to Luna, according to Gattis.

“That is exhibit A of going to Prime Video, seeing the Bond films, playing the video game, buying merchandise on [Amazon].com,” Gattis says. Amazon has the rights to “all future Bond titles” and that “I think you can expect [the next Bond game to be] an Amazon Game Studios-published game,” Gattis says. He won’t confirm yet whether IO will be the developer of any potential sequel. “As the dust settles on this one, we’ll start to pop our heads up and figure out, okay, what does [the next Bond game] look like? Who’s the right developer for it? What’s the right storyline? All those things.”

Right now, Amazon has 10 to 15 games in development, according to Gattis, who says that “probably 33 to 40 percent” are AAA titles. But those big-budget games aren’t necessary for the new audience Amazon is after with its new Luna games. The Snoop Dogg game came together in “under a year,” Gattis says. Amazon is also “big believers” in generative AI both for AI-powered games like the Snoop Dogg title but also how it can help with development more broadly. “To be clear, these are human-made games, but using AI as tools,” he says. “We haven’t cut any people because of AI. We’re just using it to try to accelerate and try to make different types of games.” (Crystal Dynamics, which is developing the Tomb Raider reboot, has admitted that it used “AI-assisted tools” during development.)

Scale is in no way a guarantee of success. Netflix has the biggest subscription business in streaming but hasn’t made much of a dent in games. And even though Amazon seems more focused than before, it still seems to be trying a bunch of different things to see what sticks, and that’s going to take time to play out. Gattis, however, is confident in Amazon’s approach. “Don’t sleep on Amazon in this space.”