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Scenes from Amazon’s New World video game.
Source: New World
As everyone paid attention to Amazon’s marathon announcement of new holiday gadgets earlier this week, the company already had another hit on its hands.
Amazon Game Studios, the video game development arm of Amazon, on Tuesday released a new computer game called “New World” that captivated the PC gaming world this week.
“New World” is an online game that allows thousands of players to explore and build a virtual colony that resembles a magical version of Colonial America. Since its launch, it has averaged hundreds of thousands of concurrent players at any given time on Steam, the most popular online store for PC games.
On launch day, the game peaked at over 700,000 concurrent players, making it one of the the biggest launches of all time. There were over 450,000 simultaneous players Thursday morning. On top of that, there have been reports of queues of up to 10,000 players just waiting to get into the game to play.
If the initial momentum behind “New World” continues, it will soon enter the canon of massively popular online games such as “Fortnite”, “PUBG” and “World of Warcraft”. And while games probably don’t generate the kind of revenue Amazon sees in e-commerce or cloud services, they can directly make money for the business unlike its other entertainment arm, Amazon Studios, which does. is primarily a way to keep people subscribed to Amazon. First. “New World” costs $ 39.99.
Additionally, Amazon owns Twitch, the gaming-focused video streaming service. A popular game like “New World” can appear on Twitch, generating more interest and potential sales on top of the new digital advertising dollars for Amazon.
“New World” marks an important milestone for Amazon. Very few companies outside of traditional game publishers have made it into the industry. For example, Google closed its game development studio earlier this year.
The early success of “New World” contrasts directly with Amazon’s first attempt at a major video game last year with a game called “Crucible,” which Amazon took offline just months after its launch following a poor reception of players. It was an embarrassment for Amazon Game Studios, which spent several years developing the title. Many in the gaming world have questioned whether Amazon would ever make a success.
Now they have their answer.
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