Amazon launches free advanced gaming engine | HT Tech

Amazon launches free advanced gaming engine

Amazon launches Lumberyard, a new high-end gaming engine that will allow developers to create AAA titles for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. VR Support coming soon

By: HT CORRESPONDENT
| Updated on: Feb 10 2016, 12:42 IST
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Amazon launches Lumberyard, a new high-end gaming engine that will allow developers to create AAA titles for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. VR Support coming soon (Amazon)
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Amazon launches Lumberyard, a new high-end gaming engine that will allow developers to create AAA titles for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. VR Support coming soon (Amazon)

Amazon has launched a new game engine capable of making AAA titles for PCs, consoles, mobiles and even VR.

Dubbed as Lumberyard, the video game engine will be available free of charge. The company says it'll make money by selling a slew of added web services to developers. Lumberyard will be "deeply integrated" with the company's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services and its live streaming video service Twitch.

"By starting game projects with Amazon Lumberyard, developers are able to spend more of their time creating differentiated game play and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building game-engine components and managing server infrastructure," Amazon said in a statement.

The move is essentially aimed at giving small developers a chance to make high-end titles and compete against the likes of publishers such as EA and Microsoft. Amazon launching its own video-game engine puts it in direct competition with other leading players such as Epic Games and Frostbite.

"When we've talked to game developers, they've asked for a game engine with the power and capability of leading commercial engines, but that's significantly less expensive," added Amazon.

Since the past two years, Amazon has been investing heavily in the gaming industry. In 2014 it acquired video-games streaming service Twitch for a hefty sum of $970 million.

In June last year the company announced it plans to develop a revolutionary PC game that will be integrated with Amazon and Twitch. The company believes that by integrating Twitch and Amazon Web Services, it could provide a solid platform for a more immersive gameplay which has the potential to unite gamers across different platforms.

"By starting game projects with Amazon Lumberyard, developers are able to spend more of their time creating differentiated game play and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building game-engine components and managing server infrastructure," Amazon said in a statement.

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First Published Date: 10 Feb, 11:45 IST
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