The first game powered by Amazon’s new Lumberyard Engine is finally here and PC gamers will be able to get a small idea of what this engine is all about. Breakaway is a team battle sport where two squads of four collide in intense competition and its alpha phase has started.
COGconnected Writes: Crucible's untimely demise marks another Amazon Game Studios project consigned to the waste bin of gaming history! Are these guys cursed? Was there an angry witch involved? Because I know a good cursebreaker, Amazon. Hit me up.
Amazon might need to be broken up as a monopoly. As having too many hats - shopping, music and video distribution, audio distribution, book distribution, credit and debt services, online and information services, now game publishing - under one roof.
Amazon has all the money in the world and they somehow cannot build a decent games studio.
And it would behoove them to have one standard game in their multi-game pipeline - a single-player game that they mold after something successful - to get a solid release under their belt and start building a modicum of cachet. The others can be experimental live-service genre-mashers, but those have high chances of failure. It seems shocking they didn't hedge their bets by putting at least one studio on something stable. Or by buying a studio with a good track record that could put out their new games under the Amazon banner.
The closest they came was buying Double Helix - decent buy - but then effectively destroying their value by taking their unique flavor & then merging it into the vat of vanilla pudding that is Amazon Gaming Studios. None of the games Amazon ended up pursuing were in DH's wheelhouse, so I'm not sure what the thought process was in that acquisition.
Not to mention that going for their own engine was also a questionable choice. Lumberyard, being based around CryEngine, limits the pool of developers/tools/documentation they have at their disposal. Not obviously the biggest stumbling block for them, but it certainly had to hinder (prototyping/iteration/buildin g tools from scratch/et al).
Lots of poor choices going around over there. They should give me a chance at management. After this many failures, what do they have to lose! With a more realistic and reasonable understanding of gaming trends, as well as a healthier appreciation for the value of money, I think I could do wonders for them :-p.
I see no reason why not, anyone is welcome to make a game as long as they make it right.
There have been so many games from major developers that we have been excited to finally play, that somehow, in some way, got axed before they were ever completed.
It's time to take a look back, and pour one out for all of the lost brothers and sisters of gaming that were taken before their time.
My top 10
Star Wars 1313 - This was my if Star Wars and Mass Effect had a baby, sorta..
Silent Hills - P.T. nuff said.
Deep Down - Visuals were stunning. Capcom, please.
Agent - it has become the R* version of TLG.
Bioshock VITA - It was legitimately planned and in the works, until it wasn't..
Visceral Star Wars - Visceral, Hennig, 3rd person Star Wars action.
Scalebound - Looked awesome early on, other than the Beats By Dre..
Prey 2
Infamous VITA (rumor)
Infamous VITA was a rumor. It was to be called Infamous: Electric Souls and Nate Fox pretty much promised me. Darn you Nate.
The Santa Monica space RPG was a shame. Too bad SSM has such high standards, i bet it wasn't that bad.
Fable Legends? Really? Every other game on that list I can agree with but that. That game never had hype. It had artificial hype from people who wanted it to be more than what it was looking to become. It was hardly ever spoken of outside of list wars and some poor schmuck who was forced to write about the game because it made an appearance at some convention. It wasn't what people wanted. They wanted a proper Fable game. They got a garbage asymmetrical multiplayer game in the vein of Evolve but even less exciting.
Eh, I think the original concept was decent enough, even if it was nothing spectacular. However it felt like the more and more they showed the worse it looked.
From Polygon: "Amazon’s in-house game studio has put an end to development on Breakaway, the competitive fantasy sport brawler that Amazon Game Studios announced in 2016. In a statement posted to Reddit, developers announced that the game is "no longer in active development"."
