Amazon spends $ 500 million a year on game development, but the result is deplorable

Amazon's gaming division has had no success since its inception. This is despite the incredible amount of money the company invests in its studios. According to the  Bloomberg report, the main reason for all the difficulties and huge losses is leadership.

Two sources familiar with Amazon's budget said the tech giant spends nearly $ 500 million a year supporting its gaming division. And that's not including the costs of Twitch and Amazon Luna's cloud gaming service.

Amazon has attracted many well-known gaming industry veterans, including Portal designer Kim Swift and Far Cry 2 director Clint Hawking, according to the report. However, since its inception, many seasoned developers have already left Amazon due to goofy leadership.

The report says Amazon is about the same level in gaming as Google, Apple, or other giants. They have deep knowledge in the field of technology, they have deep pockets for funding ambitious projects, but they simply do not understand that game development is a creative process that cannot be replaced by a thick layer of money. In the case of Amazon, the problem also arose in connection with the desire of management to use only their own technologies, such as the Lumberyard engine based on CryEngine. 

In addition, many of the developers who joined Amazon were simply unprepared for a data-centric culture. Employees were expected to give a six-page essay on any big enough decision, rather than experimenting and trying to find what makes the game fun.

All this does not mean that over time, Amazon will not learn how to make games, but unlike a video streaming service, developing even one major game is a much more complex and time-consuming process than shooting a TV series or movie. Amazon has already canceled several major titles in recent years, and the next release will be MMORPG New World, due out in the spring. But how successful this project will be is hard to say.