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Amazon wants to be making more than MMOs

Amazon wants to be making more than MMOs

Retail and tech giant Amazon says that it wants its games business to be releasing more than just MMOs. 

Speaking to GI.biz, the company's EMEA publishing boss John Rosenblatt said that it was diversifying its output "pretty rapidly". To date, Amazon's main releases have been New World and Lost Ark – made by Smilegate – both of which are MMOs. Recently the company unveiled co-op dungeon crawler King of Meat, which is being made by UK studio Glowmade. 

"Our strategy has always been to develop and publish games of the highest quality," Rosenblatt said. 

"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 went on to say that the company isn't looking for anything specific as it tries to broaden its output. Rather they will "know it when [they] see it". 

"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," he said. 

"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."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.