02/02/21 Comments Closed
With more money than they really know what to do with, the sprawling hegemony of tech giants like Amazon and Google have all turned their gaze toward video games in recent times, and yet it feels like every venture ends up a mismanaged flop that defies their grand ambitions. So what is it that they keep on getting so very, very wrong?
The last week has been particularly rough for both Amazon and Google. A report into Amazon Game Studios revealed a company pushed to create AAA hits, but without the leadership or understanding of how to get there, leading to the infamous backtrack of Crucible’s release and a slew of projects cancelled before they saw the light of day.
Bloomberg Report Reveals Major Dysfunction At Amazon Game Studios
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A soldier fights a bear (good luck) in New World. (Screenshot: Amazon Game Studios)
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You may know it as the Everything Store. But there’s one chunk of “everything” Amazon has failed to crack: video games. A new report from
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier and Priya Anand sheds light on why Amazon Game Studios, backed by one of the planet’s biggest companies, can’t seem to make a successful video game.
Why
Has Amazon Failed to Break Into Videogames?
We’ve talked about this before, but Amazon–despite being a juggernaut in just about every other industry–does not have a great track record when it comes to making videogames. The company’s attempt at an
Overwatch clone,
Crucible, was such a disaster that it got pulled five months after months. Most games are hit or miss, of course, but most of the other projects which came out of Amazon Game Studios have been misses. According to Jason Schreier, i.e. that one guy who warned us about
Cyberpunk 2077, and fellow Bloomburg writer Priya Anand, there’s a very simple reason behind this consistent pattern of failure: Mike Frazzini, the guy in charge of Amazon Game Studios, has no history of making games.
According to
Bloomberg‘s report, among the most glaring issues that has faced the company’s games division has been its manager Mike Frazzini, a veteran at Amazon but one with no prior game development experience. That lack of experience, in turn, has tended to frustrate developers when Frazzini would ignore or go against their advice and decisions, leading many to leave the studio entirely.
The report also detailed that Amazon’s in-development projects often suffered in focus and scale, with many teams trying to create projects that would rival established franchises and IP like
Overwatch,
League of Legends, and