Amazon’s new plan for games: James Bond and AI Snoop Dogg

Key points

• Amazon’s gaming strategy has never really been clear.
• It’s been very active in the space: acquiring Twitch, launching its Luna cloud gaming service nearly six years ago, investing heavily in MMOs during the peak of live-service wave, and having access to a huge slate of franchises through Prime Video and the MGM Studios library.
• Late last year, the company announced a major pivot, relaunching Luna with a focus on party games you can play with just your phone as a controller — including an AI-powered game starring Snoop Dogg as a judge — and basically jumping ship on MMOs.
• At the time, it looked like a retreat, but Amazon says that isn’t the case.
• “The reality is nothing could be further from the truth, but we haven’t really got out and said that,” Jeff Gattis, the GM of Amazon Games, tells The Verge.