Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
Amazon’s cloud unit said Thursday that it’s launching a service to allow video game publishers to stream their games online.
GameLift Streams will deliver games to any device with a browser that supports the WebRTC standard, Amazon said in a blog post. That includes smart TVs, phones, tablets and PCs. One way the service can be used is to rapidly distribute titles in development to testers, and then securely remove access later.
“Lots of AAA games are using the service in that regard,” Chris Lee, general manager and head of immersive technologies at Amazon Web Services, told CNBC. A handful of companies, such as Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, invest heavily in top-flight games with high production quality.
AWS generates a considerable amount of its revenue from core services such as renting out access to server and storage space, with data centers located around the world. But the company has hundreds of other services available to software developers. For the past decade, AWS has served as Amazon’s main profit engine.
Jackbox Games, a developer of casual games such as “Quiplash” and “Fibbage,” plans to rely on GameLift Streams to release a game-streaming service that will provide access to many of its titles. Jackbox’s games are currenlty available for an upfront fee.
Evan Jacover, Jackbox’s technology chief, said his company looked into building its own technology for streaming but decided to go with AWS after learning of its plans.
“It’s not a core competency at Jackbox Games,” Jacover said, adding the startup had a proof of concept, or POC. “We got a POC up, but it wasn’t efficient to get it really working well.”
Jackbox’s goal is to release an early ad-supported version of its service in the first half of the year, with more games and a subscription option to follow. Because the company’s games aren’t heavy on graphics, they don’t have major latency concerns and can work well on streaming.
Amazon GameLift Streams supports 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second.
“That’s kind of the sweet spot when we talk to customers,” Lee said.
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro can go up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, accommodating more advanced video. But modern game consoles cost hundreds of dollars.
The cost of GameLift Streams is based on which Nvidia graphics processing units customers use, along with consumption of storage for game data. Games can run on Windows or Linux. No modifications are required to integrate the service, the blog post said.
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