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> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like

by avar 9y ago

> Is Amazon really getting value > out of all the dev time they are > putting into building game engines? What an odd way to think about projects like these. It seems obvious that the answer is "of course not, yet". You could have asked the same question about AWS in 2001. Why is a bookstore putting all this effort into some online hosting platform for third parties?

simias 9y ago
AWS was reusing their existing infrastructure and expertise and opening it up to 3rd parties. I'm unclear why Amazon needs a custom game engine. They must have some plans to enter this area, maybe make their own VR headsets?
- iMark 9y ago
  I can think of a couple of reasons why Amazon might be interested in VR, from displaying 3D views of their products to constructing a virtual mall for browsing.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  Not really. They mostly built a second parallel system for aws and moved to using it several years after launch. Yes they used knowledge that existed in house but it was a totally separate project and mini company
  - Theodores 9y ago
    We imagined that Amazon AWS was letting us use a few of their servers that were idle because it was not the Xmas rush. This was a convenient narrative at the time and it explained the competitive pricing. Reality was that it was a different gig.
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      I believe that was the goal, but like any large endeavor it took a while to get going.
- wastedhours 9y ago
  But look at all of the other additions on top of AWS now - you're not just getting bare metals, you're getting an entire stack from the machine to the speech output. They have the bare metal, they're just ramping up the value adds in verticals they know can be huge (plus, building... and I hate the word... synergies with Twitch). All of that CryEngine expertise was probably going to go down the toilet - am going to assume it's been comparatively cheap for them to get a AAA game engine into their locker.
- kenshi 9y ago
  VR online shopping could be a massive thing one day.
  - xaedes 9y ago
    Reminds me of the virtual reality access to the market in the movie Valerian.
- JulianMorrison 9y ago
  Given the hype about running games virtualized in AWS, no it is not unclear. Amazon wants a game engine native to their cloud, rather than a PC engine running on virtualized hardware, so people can start thinking really big about VR or games, rather than "one machine at a time" models.
  - pault 9y ago
    I think this is one of those things that nobody expects that will be obvious in hindsight. Offloading rendering and game logic/AI to a massively parallel server network will allow MMOGs to break new ground in world complexity and persistence, and sell subscriptions to more people that can't afford dedicated gaming machines.
    - JulianMorrison 9y ago
      Also, they can sell to "casual" gamers. Rent a character and just go. Don't pay for more than you use.
    - simias 9y ago
      I think it would be doable for most current MMORPGS which aren't very timing sensitive so even if you have a couple hundred ms of lag it could still be playable (especially if the game is designed around this limitation). VR however is one application where network lag would clearly be totally unacceptable. Can you imagine having even 50ms of lag while turning your head in a game? It seems like out of all the applications of "cloud gaming" this would be the least suitable one. It's not even about the game feeling laggy and floaty, it's about not getting sick while playing it. I guess they could render a huge FoV for every eye and let the client do the actual tracking to mask some of the latency, but I'm not sure how you can make any translation work that way. I'm not saying it's impossible and it'll never happen but if that's really the objective it seems they're doing it the wrong way around. Shouldn't they first develop "cloud gaming" infrastructure and then move on to the particular niche of VR?
      - pault 9y ago
- FanaHOVA 9y ago
  Amazon owns Twitch and presented the Twitch Launcher not too long ago, which is basically a Steam competitor. Game engines are probably gonna be given for free to devs to build games specifically on this platform.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  In a word: Kindle. Amazon et al may anticipate VR becoming HUGE in the future, so they'd best start creating top-tier easy-access infrastructure & tools for supporting it. Each will want to be THE go-to for customers, just like e-book customers mostly go to Kindle (and a few competitors provide solid alternatives, like iBooks); wasn't that long ago most of us watched the e-book reader market explode onto the scene with lots of competition between B&N, Kobo, Sony, Amazon, Apple, and anyone else that could create a viable e-ink tablet. Similar happened with streaming video, with just a few set-top boxes surviving (Amazon FireTV, Apple TV, Roku, and a few others). All these need a solid, cheap, desirable content-creation platform and distribution system. Next up is VR: when you're going to render content, what distribution platform will you build for? how will you sell it? what's the go-to store for buying virtual worlds? Bezos & co will want you to choose Amazon Lumberyard &/| Sumerian (and Tim Cook & co will persuade accordingly toward Apple rOS, and Facebook is figuring out how to position Oculus, etc).
deleted 9y ago
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by avar 9y ago

simias 9y ago

AWS was reusing their existing infrastructure and expertise and opening it up to 3rd parties. I'm unclear why Amazon needs a custom game engine. They must have some plans to enter this area, maybe make their own VR headsets?

iMark 9y ago
I can think of a couple of reasons why Amazon might be interested in VR, from displaying 3D views of their products to constructing a virtual mall for browsing.
grogenaut 9y ago
Not really. They mostly built a second parallel system for aws and moved to using it several years after launch. Yes they used knowledge that existed in house but it was a totally separate project and mini company
- Theodores 9y ago
  We imagined that Amazon AWS was letting us use a few of their servers that were idle because it was not the Xmas rush. This was a convenient narrative at the time and it explained the competitive pricing. Reality was that it was a different gig.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    I believe that was the goal, but like any large endeavor it took a while to get going.
wastedhours 9y ago
But look at all of the other additions on top of AWS now - you're not just getting bare metals, you're getting an entire stack from the machine to the speech output. They have the bare metal, they're just ramping up the value adds in verticals they know can be huge (plus, building... and I hate the word... synergies with Twitch). All of that CryEngine expertise was probably going to go down the toilet - am going to assume it's been comparatively cheap for them to get a AAA game engine into their locker.
kenshi 9y ago
VR online shopping could be a massive thing one day.
- xaedes 9y ago
  Reminds me of the virtual reality access to the market in the movie Valerian.
JulianMorrison 9y ago
Given the hype about running games virtualized in AWS, no it is not unclear. Amazon wants a game engine native to their cloud, rather than a PC engine running on virtualized hardware, so people can start thinking really big about VR or games, rather than "one machine at a time" models.
- pault 9y ago
  I think this is one of those things that nobody expects that will be obvious in hindsight. Offloading rendering and game logic/AI to a massively parallel server network will allow MMOGs to break new ground in world complexity and persistence, and sell subscriptions to more people that can't afford dedicated gaming machines.
  - JulianMorrison 9y ago
    Also, they can sell to "casual" gamers. Rent a character and just go. Don't pay for more than you use.
  - simias 9y ago
    I think it would be doable for most current MMORPGS which aren't very timing sensitive so even if you have a couple hundred ms of lag it could still be playable (especially if the game is designed around this limitation). VR however is one application where network lag would clearly be totally unacceptable. Can you imagine having even 50ms of lag while turning your head in a game? It seems like out of all the applications of "cloud gaming" this would be the least suitable one. It's not even about the game feeling laggy and floaty, it's about not getting sick while playing it. I guess they could render a huge FoV for every eye and let the client do the actual tracking to mask some of the latency, but I'm not sure how you can make any translation work that way. I'm not saying it's impossible and it'll never happen but if that's really the objective it seems they're doing it the wrong way around. Shouldn't they first develop "cloud gaming" infrastructure and then move on to the particular niche of VR?
    - pault 9y ago
FanaHOVA 9y ago
Amazon owns Twitch and presented the Twitch Launcher not too long ago, which is basically a Steam competitor. Game engines are probably gonna be given for free to devs to build games specifically on this platform.
ctdonath 9y ago
In a word: Kindle. Amazon et al may anticipate VR becoming HUGE in the future, so they'd best start creating top-tier easy-access infrastructure & tools for supporting it. Each will want to be THE go-to for customers, just like e-book customers mostly go to Kindle (and a few competitors provide solid alternatives, like iBooks); wasn't that long ago most of us watched the e-book reader market explode onto the scene with lots of competition between B&N, Kobo, Sony, Amazon, Apple, and anyone else that could create a viable e-ink tablet. Similar happened with streaming video, with just a few set-top boxes surviving (Amazon FireTV, Apple TV, Roku, and a few others). All these need a solid, cheap, desirable content-creation platform and distribution system. Next up is VR: when you're going to render content, what distribution platform will you build for? how will you sell it? what's the go-to store for buying virtual worlds? Bezos & co will want you to choose Amazon Lumberyard &/| Sumerian (and Tim Cook & co will persuade accordingly toward Apple rOS, and Facebook is figuring out how to position Oculus, etc).

deleted 9y ago

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