Amazon has announced the launch of its service called GameOn. The announcement was made at Amazon Developer Day at GDC 2018. The service adds esports-like competitions for mobile, PC, and console games. GameOn is built on Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. The service will work on any operating system. This will help developers scale quickly and ensure ease of releasing the game on multiple platforms. The GameOn API makes it easy to add competitive, prize-based play to a game. The ensures that the developer can focus on making the game.
The prize that players win will be fulfilled by Amazon. However, the prizes are only active in US as of now.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Marja Koopmans, director of Amazon Competitive Gaming said, “We allow developers to add competitive play into games, and reward players with in-game or real-world prizes, fulfilled by Amazon. This came from conversations with mobile game developers about how we can make games more engaging.”
Amazon has been working on expanding its presence in the gaming world. Amazon Acquired streaming service Twitch back in 2014. According to Engadget, “Amazon, naturally, will profit from this, earning about a third of a cent for every play. Developers can use the APIs for free until May 1st, and the first 35,000 plays per month will be free for a limited time. Physical prizes from Amazon will only be available in the US at launch.”
Developers like Ubisoft already use Amazon's AWS to host multiplayer games, so Amazon isn’t exactly new to the world of online gaming.