Amazon aims to win gaming without becoming another Xbox

Amazon has spent years building a presence in games: it founded Amazon Game Studios in 2011, bought Twitch in 2014, launched the cloud-gaming service Stadia in 2018, shut it down and followed it with Luna in 2022, then fully rebranded that service in 2025. The company chased blockbusters, hired veteran developers and signed deals around major franchises such as Tomb Raider.

Yet both outside the company and within its walls, the overall strategy remained unclear until recently; Jeff Gattis, an Xbox veteran who joined in 2025 after six years at Microsoft, says he inherited a fragmented business. Gattis argues that fragmentation was the core problem and that the first step was putting Prime Gaming, Luna and other efforts under one roof.

Amazon also scaled back some AAA and MMO ambitions last year, moving away from projects including New World, which will end in January 2027, and weathering setbacks such as a canceled internal project that developers tried to remake around generative AI.

amazon, twitch, luna, prime gaming, jeff gattis, xbox, stadia, generative ai, aaa, mmo