Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Early this morning (or late last night, depending on your sleep schedule) Rod “Slasher” Breslau, leaker extraordinaire, was sent an embargoed packet of information from a Twitch Partner about a grand name and brand change where Twitch Prime will henceforth be known as “Prime Gaming,” as of later today.
The large brand guidebook talks its way through what is now Prime Gaming, which really does not seem all that much different than Twitch Prime, and this change does appear to be mostly cosmetic. But the overall emphasis is to bring the service more in line with other offerings like Prime Video and Prime Music, both in terms of their names, but also focus on things like free games people get to keep or opportunities for free in-game content in games (this already exists through Twitch Prime).
There are some funny things in the guidebook, namely a section about the “Emotional Benefits” of Prime Gaming which includes a “Sense of value from the most comprehensive, cost-effective subscription service.” Wow, any subscription service? Must be quite a deal.
Most of the public focus on Prime Gaming this morning ahead of the official announcement later this afternoon is how it doesn’t really roll off the tongue like Twitch Prime. Twitch Prime has been plugged so many times and so often by streamers (it’s a huge moneymaker for them) that it’s become a meme in the community (“Have you heard about our lord and savior Twitch Prime?”) and changing memes is not terribly easy.
But while yes, this does seem to be to streamline the brand across Prime Video and Prime Music, I think the main reason for this change is something that has not happened yet: the arrival of Amazon’s game streaming service which will use AWS to stream games directly to devices like Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud are doing now. And when that does arrive, I have to believe it will be firmly under the “Prime Gaming” banner.
The problem is that for now, the service, codenamed Project Tempo, has been delayed. It was originally supposed to either debut or at least be announced by this fall, but last we heard about it back in April 2020 was that it had been delayed until some time in 2021 via a NYT article that spotlighted that Amazon was “making games, not just streaming them,” highlighting titles Crucible and New World.
Crucible
Well, observers will know that Amazon has had a very tough time breaking into the gaming world outside of acquiring Twitch and its market share. Crucible was such a disaster that the game took the unprecedented step of going back into a closed alpha after it debuted and simply no one showed up. New World, an MMO, isn’t out yet, was supposed to launch in two weeks and has now been delayed until spring 2021. The game has changed direction so many times it’s hard to know where it stands now, and it does not look terribly promising.
But game streaming is something Amazon should in theory be able to do well with all its infrastructure. However, the game streaming market has yet to really emerge as something substantial and viable. Google Stadia has struggled to make much of an impact since its debut, with a limited catalog of games and a limited use case for when game streaming is really necessary. Microsoft’s xCloud seems like it has the potential to find more success given that it’s attached to Game Pass and the Xbox ecosystem. But Project Tempo/Prime Gaming will be more like Stadia, with nothing backing it up. Google has started crafting first party studios to make exclusive Stadia games to make the service more attractive, and yet this is something, as mentioned, Amazon has already tried, and it is not going well.
So yes, for now Prime Gaming will be announced mainly as a rebrand of Twitch Prime, but I would expect Amazon to continue to expand its gaming ambitions no matter what setbacks it faces, and Prime Gaming a year from now could be very different than what it is this afternoon.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/08/10/twitch-prime-changing-to-prime-gaming-is-likely-for-one-major-unspoken-reason/
2020-08-10 13:00:00Z
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