Amazon CEO: Video Games could become our Biggest Entertainment Business

The new CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, in light of the success of New World on Steam, said that video games could become the largest entertainment category for the company.

Andy Jesse, photo: Reuters

Jesse shared this conclusion on October 5 at the GeekWire conference. He also noted that the company was able to prove to both the media and gamers that it knows how to develop and launch hits.

Before the launch of New World, Amazon’s games did not work out. The fantasy sports action Breakaway was canceled after two years of development, the Crucible shooter was closed five months after the beta version was released, and the development of the Lord of the Rings MMO was stopped after unsuccessful negotiations with Tencent.

Vice president of Amazon Game Studios Christoph Hartmann last September explained the company’s previous failures by haste and poor knowledge of the market:

“We should have remembered that we should not rush to enter the market segment where there are obvious leaders. We launched Crucible at a time when PUBG and Fortnite were at the pinnacle of success.”
The new launch approach really worked for New World.

The release of the game was postponed more than once and as a result it came out in a relatively unsaturated segment with new offers.

On the day of release, the peak number of online players exceeded 700 thousand people – the game held high positions in the Steam tops on a par with Dota 2, PUBG and Counter—Strike. Also, the MMO took four lines in the Steam bestseller chart at once.

But not everyone appreciated the success of New World. The owner of the analytical company DFC Intelligence, David Cole, was skeptical about Amazon’s victory:

“It’s too early to say that the product is a hit. (..) If it wasn’t for the Amazon name, I don’t think this game would have received so much attention.”