Amazon is trying to woo indie game developers, and it might just work

By Hugh Langley

Unexpectedly, Amazon has announced a free and open-source 3D game engine for developers. It’s called Lumberyard, and it’s a modified version of Crytek’s CryEngine – that should tell you that this is meant for AAA games. The engine can create games for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Oh yeah, and the beta version is available right now. (Not to mention it supports virtual reality.)

What sets Lumberyard apart is that it’s a.) also royalty-free and b.) comes with the option to integrate Amazon’s cloud services, which is how the company plans to make its money with this.

Developers will have to pay to take advantages of Amazon Web Services, which will include Twitch (which Amazon bought last year), letting gamers start streaming in a couple of button presses.

Amazon GameLift, meanwhile, lets developers – or devs – easily scale multiplayer games up to support millions of players without paying out for a load of engineering work. There are others, but the point is that Amazon is offering the types of features serious devs are going to want.

While the AAA game support is there, it’s the indie developers who could benefit most from Lumberyard, which offers the opportunity to try out ideas …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming