Amazon's widening bet on games: "We're not hell bent on just being MMOs"

At first glance, last night's reveal of King of Meat doesn't seem to fit with Amazon's video games strategy thus far.

While it was already known the publisher had signed the next title from UK developer Glowmade, the team behind King of Meat, most of Amazon's efforts since announcing its move into PC and console way back in 2014 have been more targeted at hardcore gamers — and particularly MMO fans.

The company attempted to reach this crowd with multiplayer brawler Breakaway (cancelled in 2018) and team-based shooter Crucible (scrapped in 2020). Amazon has had considerably more success with its two recent MMOs — 2021's New World and 2022's Lost Ark — with a second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMO in the works.

So where does a cartoonish co-op dungeon crawler with a focus on user-generated levels fit within Amazon's plans?

"Our strategy has always been to develop and publish games of the highest quality," EMEA publishing director Jon Rosenblatt tells GamesIndustry.biz. "We're not hell bent on it just being MMOs. As you'll see with the recent announcement of Maverick and obviously Crystal Dynamics for Tomb Raider, plus the MOBA being made in our Montreal studio, we're actually really diversifying our portfolio pretty rapidly and we want to continue to do that.

"It's really important for us to continue to build amazing games, but also make sure that the games are diverse in their look and their feel. King of Meat was just an ideal opportunity for us to work with a very talented team in Guildford, and really grow that game out into something much bigger than maybe they have planned."

Rosenblatt adds that Amazon continues to expand the number of platforms it reaches. The company has focused on PC so far, with console versions of New World heading to PlayStation and Xbox later this year, while King of Meat will mark the publisher's Switch debut (it's also coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S).

"We're not focused necessarily on genres or regions. When we see the right game at the right time, we want to be in with a shout of signing it"

Jon Rosenblatt, Amazon Games

When it comes to what Amazon is looking for as it diversifies its games range, the company seems to be taking a more open approach. Rosenblatt says the three pillars his team searches for are solid and interesting tech, a creative team, and an IP that shows potential for growth — but beyond this, there's no Amazon wishlist when it comes to genres, target audience, and so forth.

"You know it when you see it," he laughs. "We're not focused necessarily on genres, we're not focused necessarily on regions — although obviously my remit is to really grow our European talent. We just feel like when we see the right game at the right time, we want to be in with a shout of signing it.

"We're not going to kind of have this Amazon games image, that it 'feels like an Amazon game'. We just want our customers to have an amazing time with our games."

Amazon's team is in Cologne this week for Gamescom, with Rosenblatt reporting its diary for all three business days is "absolutely packed" with a variety of potential signings. While the Amazon name (and no doubt its capital) are a key draw, the publishing director says that there has been a noticeable uptick in pitches since the firm's two MMOs have proven to be a success.

"We saw triple digit growth in inbound developer requests to meet with us off the back of Lost Ark and New World," he explains. "What we saw from our conversations — certainly with Mike Brown and the team at Maverick — is that one of the opportunities and advantages that Amazon has is not just that we're a global games publisher, but we can offer so much more to customers for those games.

"Whether it's through Prime Gaming, Prime Video and the opportunity for some kind of transmedia, through working with AWS or Amazon Music… I think a lot of the developers are now looking at us and saying, 'Well, okay, we know that you can make and publish great games, your marketing and your back end and all your teams are working at an extremely high bar. We wanna build this IP. Amazon can actually do so much more than so many others.' And so that's one of the reasons why I think we're so compelling for developers out there."

Amazon and Glowmade first announced their partnership in 2021, but despite working together for three years, King of Meat's reveal did not carry a release date. This is in part because Amazon is keen to give the developers it works with more time to ensure their games are truly ready for launch.

"We're fortunate in as much as we're not bound by fiscal responsibilities like some game developers are," Rosenblatt explains. "What Amazon wants us to do and what Christoph [Hartmann, Amazon Games vice president] wants us to do is to make sure that when we are developing a game, whether it's internally or with their external partners, we give them the time and the space to do the things that they feel will make the change. If it means an extra couple of months or an additional quarter, which can make all the difference, then we're able to do that and I think that's really important for us.

"Maybe it's taken us a long time to get to where we are with New World and Lost Ark, and obviously we've got two releases coming down the pipe later on this year, but you'll start to see this kind of this diverse portfolio of quality games. We really want to make sure that we're giving Crystal Dynamics and Maverick and all of our teams the time that they need to build amazing and compelling experiences."