5 reasons why Amazon Game Studios, which released “New World”, has been struggling until now

This is Nakauchi from the technical sales department.

"New World" has finally been released!
Originally scheduled for release in May 2020, it was postponed four times and is now finally being released on September 28, 2021!

Apparently, the number of simultaneous connections exceeded 700,000 on the first day. It's going well!

What is New World?

It's an MMORPG with a one-time purchase model, not a subscription.
However, it doesn't support Japanese and the servers aren't located in Asia.
Therefore, it may take some time to connect due to distance issues.
The game engine is the company's own Lumberyard.
As an aside, Lumberyard will be renamed "Open 3D Engine" and made open source.

Amazon Game Studios continues to struggle

However, I think everyone knows that Amazon Game Studios has struggled since it was founded in 2012

Christoph Hartmann, the current VP (Vice President) of Amazon Game Studios, has acknowledged past mistakes.
I'm not just saying this on my own.

Reasons for the struggle

1. The person in charge has no experience with games

Mike Frazzini, the head of Amazon Game Studios, was appointed when the company launched, but
at the time, he had no experience in games and was a book business manager before taking on the role.
So why was someone like him appointed to the role despite his lack of experience? It seems that
Amazon's common sense is that "if you can run one business, you can run another."

2. The big names we brought in are leaving one after another

Kim Swift (designer of Puzzle Game Portal),
Clint Hocking (director of Far Cry 2),
Richard Hillman (Madden guru),
Mark Whitten (former boss of Xbox Live).

There's no one here anymore

3. The problem of excessive costs

, Amazon is pouring $500 million into its gaming division annually.
That's about 55 billion yen in Japanese yen.

4. Development titles are being shelved or discontinued one after another

Crucible
Released in May 2020 (service ended after 5 months)
Amazon's first title, a free-to-play online battle game

"Lord of the Rings" MMORPG
shelved after disagreements with Tencent

Breakaway
was discontinued due to a lack of quality.

5. Amazon's culture isn't conducive to game development

A former employee said
the company was "data-driven" and employees were required to create six-page documents to approve major decisions.

"The game engine required developers to develop using their own engine, Lumberyard, rather than Unreal Engine or Unity. As a result, some features required complex commands, making the system extremely slow, and developers had to play games or watch Amazon Prime Video while waiting for Lumberyard to process art or compile code."

"There was a whisper internally that Lumberyard was ruining Amazon Game Studios."

However, the world-famous Amazon is not going to let it end like this!

Amazon has a huge amount of capital and the world's largest infrastructure, AWS.
It will also begin distribution of the Korean MMORPG "LostArk" in North America and Europe in 2022.
Amazon has been successful in e-commerce, cloud computing, streaming, and other latecomers, so it seems like the day when they'll succeed in the gaming industry isn't far off.

Reference sites:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-09-22-amazon-games-christoph-hartmann-eventually-well-be-judged-by-our-successes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/amazon-drops-company-policies-on-game-development-after-backlash