The move aims to reach a broader audience by removing the need for dedicated consoles.
Amazon Brings Luna Cloud Gaming to Prime Video on Fire TV
Amazon has integrated its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, making video games accessible at no extra charge to Prime members on Fire TV devices in the U.S. and UK. The launch introduces a dedicated Games tab alongside Movies, TV Shows, Live TV, and Sports, placing interactive entertainment directly next to traditional streaming video. Cloud gaming allows players to stream and play games online from a remote server using a phone, tablet or controller, rather than downloading and running it on a PC or console at home.
The initial library features a mix of licensed third-party titles, party games, and first-party releases developed by Amazon’s own gaming division, including its Courtroom Chaos
games and the co-op card battler Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite.
Users can play games like Hogwarts Legacy, EA Sports FC 26, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and casual family favorites like Clue, Ticket to Ride, and Taboo using a standard controller or a phone. Amazon says it will add new games every month.
Targeting the Casual Audience Beyond Traditional Consoles
Jeff Gattis, general manager of gaming at Amazon, noted that the expansion is designed to capture a massive demographic of players who enjoy video games but do not own expensive, dedicated hardware. According to Jeff Gattis, there are somewhere between two-and-a-half and three billion people who play games around the world, but only a fraction of those own dedicated gaming hardware.
Amazon’s been kind of ticking away at the gaming space for over a decade now, I think with varying degrees of success, but really has never established Amazon as a gaming platform, a destination where people come to play games,
says Jeff Gattis, GM of gaming for Amazon.
Jeff Gattis, general manager of gaming at Amazon
From a business perspective, we’re just going to drive a ton more of discovery and awareness of this great benefit, and ideally at the end of the day, it’s getting more people playing video games, Gattis explained
Gattis explained that the initiative removes the barriers to gaming by eliminating the need to purchase a high-end PC or a console, making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows. For a lot of people, games have been harder to find than they should be,
Jeff Gattis, general manager of gaming at Amazon, said in a press release. “Bringing Luna inside Prime Video allows Prime members to discover games more naturally, and if they see one they like, they click it and they’re in. That’s less time searching and more time playing great games included with their Prime membership.”
Gattis argued that there was still a huge untapped audience beyond traditional console owners which Amazon was trying to reach. “Your PlayStations, your Xboxes, your Steam and PC players tends to be really well served already. I might even argue over-served, where they’re largely just competing for the same pool of players and trying to take share from one another, and it’s a pool that’s really not growing in terms of console install base,” Gattis says. “When we step back a little bit and just looked at the overall gaming market, there’s three and a half billion people in the world who play video games. There’s only about 300 million consoles and gaming PCs out there, so you don’t have to do heavy math to realize there’s a lot of people that love to play games, but are not necessarily playing in the highest fidelity environment.”
Cloud Gaming Market Pressures and Industry Perspectives
Amazon’s push into cloud streaming arrives as consumers face rising hardware costs. Amazon’s head of gaming Jeff Gattis has told the BBC he believes the rising cost of tech means people will turn to streaming games online rather than buying new consoles. He said the tech has developed a lot in recent years, making it more viable than it used to be – but accepted some people will still buy their own hardware. While cloud gaming has long been billed as the future of video games, previous efforts have failed to gain widespread adoption – leading to the high-profile closure of Google Stadia in 2023. Many firms already offer this as part of their subscription services, including giants Sony and Microsoft, but people continue to favour installing games on their own machines.
Gattis argued that streaming games could help people who do not want to spend hundreds – or even thousands – of pounds on a console or gaming PC. As hardware becomes more expensive, and as streaming technology continues to improve, I think you'll naturally…
Gattis noted regarding the shifting hardware landscape.
Future Rollout and Interactive Video Experiences
Amazon plans to continue adding new games on a monthly basis. Layering games on top of series or films is another objective. A video game accompanying the recent Masters of the Universe film from Amazon MGM Studios is available via the outlet, for example. In other sync-up, AI party game Courtroom Chaos: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is streaming ahead of Prime Video holiday movie release The Man with the Bag.