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Amazon announces 'Luna', their own take on cloud game streaming

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Stadia, GeForce NOW and Microsoft's own xCloud have more competition coming with Amazon formally throwing their controller onto the sofa with Amazon Luna.

Amazon Luna will give you access to certain Channels of games which you subscribe to. The first two announced are Amazon's own Luna+ to get access to a "growing" library and Ubisoft are also confirmed to have their own subscription channel coming to it too. The Luna+ subscription will have 100s of games from big names too like Resident Evil 7, Control, The Surge 2, A Plague Tale: Innocence and a great many more. By the time it launches, it's going to have quite a full library already.

Instead of the Stadia and GeForce NOW model, they're very much going for a 'Netflix of games' style that Microsoft is doing with things like Game Pass. Just like Google Stadia, Amazon Luna will have its own dedicated Alexa-enabled gamepad which connects directly to Amazon through WiFi which is supposed to help reduce latency which is the biggest problem with these services.

Luna will come with heavy Twitch integration too, including showing you Twitch streams for games across the Luna service. This makes sense, since Amazon own Twitch. This is where it gets really interesting, and something Google has been ridiculously slow on with Stadia. You will see Twitch streams inside Luna, and be able to click play and jump right into a game while watching on Twitch. The power of that cannot be understated.

Currently, early access to Luna is available exclusively by invitation and even then that's only in the USA. Everyone else will just have to sit and wait until Amazon open it up further.

It's not clear if it will work on Linux or be supported at this time. However, Amazon did mention it can be played in a Chrome browser so it's quite likely it will be able to run on Linux just like Stadia and GeForce NOW. Full press release available here and you can find the Luna page here. Once we find out more and any Linux details, we will let you know.

How long until Valve throw their Steam Controller onto the sofa and announce their own? If they don't, they might end up as one of the only major gaming stores not to at this rate. The cloud game streaming wars have truly begun now. How do you feel about it?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Nezchan Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: Orkultus
Quoting: kuhpunktKinda worried about the future honestly... so much fragmentation, everybody wants its own thing.

Yeah they never really ask what the players want do they?

Players' role is to shut up and keep shovelling money in.
ElectricPrism Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: 1xokValve is much smaller than Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Valve is basically a family business. Okay a pretty big one but just small compared to a company like Amazon. Amazon has almost unlimited computing power. Valve can't build something like that even if they wanted to.

This always triggers a personal hangup whereby people inappropriately conflate Size, Amount, or Marketshare with success -- and yet we live in a world where 1% of the world controls over 50% of the money, and 1% of a poison substance in water can still kill.

I often see numerical arguments about the % of Linux users vs other groups that misrepresent the reality of how much money and games users of Linux demographic buy vs other operating systems.

And they think that somehow scarcity of available-content doesn't effect sell products when they are trying to compete against a hundred billion other games in the MASS MARKET.

Like somehow because Amazing is "BIGGER" and have various Market-Territories and SCOPE they are suddenly "BETTER" or ready to enter the gaming space or any have any clue what they're doing. It took Xbox probably a good 5 years around 2000 where Microsoft was loosing money, they had no idea what they were doing, and we're trying to get solid talent and grounded in the Gaming Industry.

It's like a person who has 5 million dollars and wants to instantly build a house, as if money was the only metric that effects things has no concept of staging contractors and a order of operations.

Some people aren't aware that in the past Valve has actually been the most profitable company per employee in the United States.

https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/15/valve-makes-more-money-per-employee-than-google-or-apple/

I agree the entrance of Amazon into the digital game content steaming market is significant and interesting, but as a gamer my interest is pretty low from what I know so far.

I am however very interested in if they are using AWS or other Linux and doing things that will benefit Linux via kernel patches, MESA improvements, etc...

I really don't want to pay to "rent content" and rely on some "gaming farm thing" being online to enjoy the products I pay for. (Exactly how long will it be before the Gaming Provider injects a 3 minuet ad every 15 minuets in addition to the upfront high service cost. They literally can't help but rape the customer for as much money as they can from exacting cash from customers and advertisers.) Some people will love it, but these are separate markets with maybe some overlap.

We're approaching a "lost age" where this content could disappear from the future once these services shut down in failure or move on. I'm not going to play the [streaming] game.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, no hard feelings it's just a primitive and over-simplistic appraisal I see so often propagated by low IQ people, and it sounds good until you really stop to think about it and realize the truth in what Yoda says "Size Matters Not"


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 25 September 2020 at 1:01 am UTC
SuperTux Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: Orkultus
Quoting: kuhpunktKinda worried about the future honestly... so much fragmentation, everybody wants its own thing.

Yeah they never really ask what the players want do they?

Why ask, just watch what they do? Take a look at Epic, all the complaints would have made you think they'd fail...
Mezron Sep 25, 2020
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Quoting: Mohandevir
QuoteHow long until Valve throw their Steam Controller onto the sofa and announce their own?

We always have the choice, but Valve is in a position where it could crush everyone of them, if they don't wait too long. I'm affraid that's what might play against Valve... Valve time.

The train is leaving the station, they should jump onboard before it's too late. New market... Better early than late.

I don't know enough about the industry but in my fantasy land brain, I would love for Valve to get Stadia built in.
gabber Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: kuhpunktKinda worried about the future honestly... so much fragmentation, everybody wants its own thing.
Since I think cloud-gaming is worse then gaming on Windows, I hope more services pop up so people get fed up and the whole thing dies. Stadia was/is hyped because it runs Linux. Now there are games on Stadia which are not available on Linux, so it did not help in that regard. Yes, you can use stadia on linux. But, unlike having the binaries on your PC, this might break and you loose access. And they even started with exclusives ..

tldr;
Fragmentation is the chemo-therapy for the cancer which is cloud-gaming.
pb Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: kuhpunktKinda worried about the future honestly... so much fragmentation, everybody wants its own thing.

If this continues and if they start having exclusives, piracy will surge. Nobody wants more than 1-2 subscriptions, if any.
Liam Dawe Sep 25, 2020
Not that it matters to the vast majority (us Linux fans don't count for much...) it's based on Windows https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1309271277325049856?s=20
3zekiel Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: Liam DaweNot that it matters to the vast majority (us Linux fans don't count for much...) it's based on Windows https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1309271277325049856?s=20

I wonder, should we jump on the stadia train for now? I mean, they are the only one who kinda support us for now... Do you think that a strong stadia will encourage more devs to go for Linux ?
flesk Sep 25, 2020
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Quoting: 3zekiel
Quoting: Liam DaweNot that it matters to the vast majority (us Linux fans don't count for much...) it's based on Windows https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1309271277325049856?s=20

I wonder, should we jump on the stadia train for now? I mean, they are the only one who kinda support us for now... Do you think that a strong stadia will encourage more devs to go for Linux ?

Stadia unquestionably has more positive repercussions for us, since it forces developers to adapt to Linux and Vulkan, whereas Luna makes that completely irrelevant. No matter what you think of streaming, Stadia is clearly a better deal for our ecosystem than Luna or GeForce Now.
Mohandevir Sep 25, 2020
Minor stuff, but one of the problems that GeForce now has, with a Windows backhand, is the fact that you have to deal with the Windows desktop. It's pretty easy to minimize the Steam/Uplay/Epic window to the tray without being able to bring it back in full screen. You get the feeling that it lacks a K+M, when it happens. I don't know what it's going to be like on Luna, but that's my oberservation; It's not a fully integrated solution. You really have the feeling that you are dealing with a Windows desktop. On this aspect, Stadia is much more polished, even if still incomplete.

Imo, it feels like a badly integrated PC-Console hybrid that's even worse than what the Steam Machines were, concerning the critics it received, at the time...


Last edited by Mohandevir on 25 September 2020 at 12:30 pm UTC
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