With Amazon making layoffs and its game streaming service reportedly struggling to make an impact, you wouldn’t expect the company to be rushing to expand it beyond the US.
And yet that’s exactly what the company has done, launching Luna in the UK, Germany and Canada.
While the basic tier is free to anybody with an Amazon Prime account, the selection of rolling titles is pretty sparse. At the time of writing, there are only four games for those unwilling to upgrade to a more expensive package: Trails from Zero, Get Packed Couch Chaos, Megaman 11 and Sail Forth.
To get more, you have to subscribe to one of three packages. Two of these offer a specific set of games.
First, there’s Ubisoft Plus, which gives access to Ubisoft’s big franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six and Watch Dogs, among others, for £14.99 per month.
Alternatively, if you enjoy the excellent party games provided by JackBox games, then you can get access to the full catalogue for £3.99 a month.
Finally, there’s a grab-bag selection of games from various publishers curated by Amazon itself. At the time of writing, it’s still a pretty sparse collection, comprising 108 games of mixed quality. Stone-cold classics such as Overcooked, Resident Evil 2, Control and Alien Isolation are joined by plenty of filler.
All of these games are playable with Bluetooth controllers on iOS, Android, Mac, PC, Chromebooks, Fire tablets and Fire TV. But if you don’t have a pad lying around, Amazon will sell you an official Luna controller for £59.99.
As Amazon also owns Twitch — the platform for streaming game footage, rather than playing — the service is integrated here. You can search for a streamer and watch straight from Luna, or broadcast your own gameplay at the press of a button.
How does Amazon Luna compare to its rivals?
With Google Stadia dead and gone, Luna currently has two game streaming rivals in the UK, with one more potentially coming in the next few years.
Xbox Cloud Gaming
The first is Microsoft with Xbox Cloud Gaming. This is a perk of Game Pass’s most expensive Ultimate subscription (£10.99 per month) rather than a service in its own right.
But by our count, it features 369 games including Microsoft and Bethesda favourites such as The Elder Scrolls, Halo, Gears of War, Forza and Fallout. A smattering of EA titles are in the mix too (Battlefield, Mass Effect, Star Wars: Battlefront) and — awkwardly for the Ubisoft Plus pack on Luna — a couple of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Watch Dog games (though not as many as with the dedicated pack on Luna).
This is an especially strong option if you have an Xbox and/or a PC — because the Ultimate subscription also includes downloadable games for both, with Xbox Live Gold, which makes multiplayer work on console.
Nvidia GeForce Now
Next up is Nvidia GeForce Now, which is a very different proposition in that it doesn’t come with any games. Instead, GeForce Now essentially offers a powerful gaming PC in the cloud where you can connect (most — around 1,500) games you already own in Steam, Origin, Epic Games, GoG or Ubsisoft Connect.
Because there are no games included, it comes in cheaper. It’s free if you’re happy with what Nvidia calls a “basic rig” and sessions are capped to an hour in length (you’re free to immediately rejoin, but you may face a queue if it’s busy).
So how does Nvidia make money? There are two premium versions. ‘Priority’ gives you a “premium rig” complete with ray tracing, six hours of gameplay at a time, 1080p/60fps gameplay for £8.99 per month. ‘Ultimate’, meanwhile, gives you a rig powered by Nvidia’s most powerful graphics cards, with up to 4K resolution and 120fps on its fastest servers for £17.99 per month.
Netflix (TBA)
In the ‘TBA’ column is Netflix. While the service does already have some games, these are standard mobile phone titles that just so happen to be included in the subscription, rather than the triple-A streaming fair facilitated by Amazon, Nvidia and Microsoft.
But that could change in the future. Eventually, the company wants subscribers to play “on any Netflix device they have”, but that seems to be some way off.
“We’re very seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering so that we can reach members on TVs and on PCs,” said Netflix’s VP of games, Mike Verdu, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last year.
“We’re going to approach this the same way we did with mobile, which is start small, be humble, be thoughtful, and then build out. But it is a step we think we should take to meet members where they are on the devices where they consume Netflix.”
Eventually, that could lead to a serious rival to all three of its opponents. But if Google’s ill-fated attempt at cloud gaming with Stadia taught us anything, it’s that even big players can easily overreach and ultimately admit defeat.
