Amazon announced today that it has updated some versions of its Prime Video app to include direct access to its cloud-based Luna gaming platform.
The business goal is to solve Lunaβs awareness problem and bring new users to the platform. Many Prime members donβt know the gaming service is included with their membership.
Consumers in the US and UK who have both a Prime subscription and a Fire TV can now launch Luna directly from the Prime Video app, where it can be found in its own dedicated tab in the UI. Prime subscribers who launch Luna in the app will get direct access to a library of both casual and mainstream βAAAβ video games for no additional cost and without having to exit the app.
βEffectively, we relaunched last October, taking a bunch of the value of Luna that had been behind a paywallβ¦ We pushed it into the Prime membership, as a way of providing great value and trying to grow our business,β Jeff Gattis, GM of gaming at Amazon, told GeekWire.
Players on Luna can stream an assortment of games to their TV or browser via Amazonβs cloud servers, using a smartphone as a controller if they donβt have a compatible gamepad. Lunaβs current library ranges from established mainstream hits like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Dispatch, and Fallout 4 to an assortment of casual-friendly exclusive titles like Amazonβs own Courtroom Chaos.
Since that relaunch, Gattis said, the company has βbasically 5xβdβ its player base.
βThe question for us is, how do you build upon that?β he said. βHow do we let 200 million-plus Prime members worldwide know that they have this great benefit where you can play $70 games inside your Prime membership at no additional cost? One of our biggest challenges today remains that people donβt know the [Luna] benefit exists.β
While Luna was previously available to Prime subscribers via web browser and a couple of other types of smart TVs, it was a standalone service that required users to seek it out on its own. By shifting it into its own tab on the Prime Video app, Amazonβs hope is to drive up awareness that, well, Luna is there at all.
βItβll start on Fire TV, but obviously our end state is to roll out to more countries and more devices, both first-party and third-party,β Gattis said. βEventually weβll be everywhere that Prime Video is.β
The integration of Luna with Prime could also potentially bring back the largely-abandoned practice of video game movie tie-ins. Fans of this summerβs Masters of the Universe reboot can watch the film on Prime Video, then switch to Luna to play Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite, a strategic deckbuilding game thatβs currently exclusive to Luna. This kind of transmedia synergy used to be a part of every big summer action movie, but itβs largely fallen by the wayside since the 2010s.
Luna originally debuted in 2020 as a subscription-based cloud service. Subscribers could pay a monthly fee for access to over 100 video games, which they could play through their browser by streaming them from Amazonβs servers.
Back then, Luna was Amazonβs entry into what was shaping up to be a publisher-driven βbattle for the cloud,β with companies like Google and Nvidia all launching their own game streaming services. Over time, however, the cloudβs impact on gaming hasnβt matched its early hype.
More recently, the component crunch has driven up the price of consoles and graphics cards, and that plays into Amazonβs bet on Luna.
Gattis said the cloud has been βtechnology ahead of its time,β in part because the industry aimed it at the wrong people, pitching it as a direct replacement for consoles and gaming PCs.
βThatβs a heavy lift to ask somebody like myself,β he said. βIβve invested both emotionally and financially in my Series X console and my 5090 graphics card. Iβm happy.β
Amazon is catering to everyone else: players unlikely to buy a gaming PC or a current-generation console, let alone the next generation of gaming hardware at even higher prices. For the first time, Gattis said, there are βa lot more people who are going to think about the cloud as a viable alternative to $1,500 hardware.β
Amazon confirmed Wednesday that it laid off an unspecified number of employees in its artificial general intelligence (AGI) organization, the division working on the companyβs advanced AI models.
The move, first reported by Reuters, comes as the company invests heavily in programs to help businesses implement AI effectively, including a $1 billion initiative to embed AWS engineers with customers building agentic AI systems.
Itβs part of a larger shift in the industry as tech giants and AI frontier labs look to make sure the enormous sums theyβre spending on AI pay off in tools businesses actually use.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said building large AI models remains βone of the most important things weβre working on,β but said the company is also βsharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts.β
βThat focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customersβ future,β the spokesperson said.
Itβs the latest in a series of changes in Amazonβs AGI group, which despite its name has always been focused more on frontier models than on what the industry considers AGI, the still-theoretical systems that would match or surpass human intelligence.
Rohit Prasad, the senior executive who oversaw Amazonβs AGI work, left the company late last year, and AGI Lab head David Luan departed in February. In December, Amazon folded the AGI group into a larger organization led by senior vice president Peter DeSantis that also includes chip development and quantum computing.
The cuts are the latest in a series of smaller reductions since January, when Amazon eliminated 16,000 jobs across the company. Amazon said U.S. employees whose jobs are cut will receive 90 days of pay and benefits, outplacement support and transitional health coverage, along with eligibility for severance.
Tablets are great. You can use them for anything from browsing the web to watching your favorite shows. They're incredibly versatile, but that versatility can come at a cost. There are plenty of things that a jailbroken Kindle can do better.
Jimothy isnβt just a viral internet sensation β heβs a cause for good.
A painting of the beloved raccoon by Seattle artist Ryan Henry Ward attracted a winning bid of $6,543.21 in an informal Instagram auction this weekend, with all proceeds directed to the Ballard Food Bank.
The winning bidder for the 24-by-24-inch painting was identified by Ward as Angela Galdabini, who posted a picture of the painting hanging on her wall.
Now the auction gift is going viral in its own way, attracting a matching donation from Amazon, which encouraged other Seattle-area companies to follow suit. According to the tech giant on Monday, T-Mobile, Alaska Air and Brooks have all gotten on board.
βWhen we saw a local artist giving back to the Ballard Food Bank, inspired by a little raccoon thatβs brought so much joy, we wanted to help,β Kara Hurst, Amazonβs chief sustainability officer, said in a statement. βAmazon is proud to match the winning bid, and weβre calling on other Seattle-based companies to join us.β
Update: On Tuesday, Microsoft let us know that they, too, had committed funds to the food bank.
Jimothy seemed destined to be captured by Ward, a prolific muralist whose colorful, whimsical work is seen across the Seattle region on buildings, fences, garage doors and elsewhere. His art frequently features a variety of animals and other characters, including Sasquatch.
Ward called Jimothy βthe hero we neededβ in his Instagram post on Saturday, and said he was giving to Ballard Food Bank because the organization helped him through some of his hardest times.
The viral Jimothy sensation took off last week when the raccoon was spotted in Ballard and a video attracted millions of views on Instagram. The craze spread around the world and other videos have emerged online, sparking immense curiosity and adoration, and a floodΒ of memes, artwork, food, crafts, poetry, songs and more.Β
An AWS software bug showed some customers billing estimates in the billions and trillions. Here is what failed, why invoices were unaffected, and what IT teams should know.
The post AWS Billion-Dollar Software Bug Explained appeared first on TechRepublic.
An AWS software bug showed some customers billing estimates in the billions and trillions. Here is what failed, why invoices were unaffected, and what IT teams should know.
The post AWS Billion-Dollar Software Bug Explained appeared first on TechRepublic.
Life is busy, and I don't always have time to sit and read articles when I discover them. Pocket used to allow me to save these articles and read them later, but it's sadly long gone. I decided to set up a Pocket replacement using a mini PC and my Kindle.
If there are three things folks typically know about me, it's that I love Linux, I'm an avid reader and I have a bit of an obsession with modding Kindles and Fire Tablets. I would say, "Hey, I resemble that remark!" and then wait patiently while no one catches the reference. One Kindle has eluded me all these years, but I finally found one: a Kindle Fire 7 (2012). I tried to mod it, with a little help from Claude.
One of Amazonβs top cloud leaders will be joining Meta as the Facebook parent company considers turning its massive AI buildout into a cloud business of its own.
Thatβs the report from the Wall Street Journal overnight, quoting anonymous sources saying that Dave Brown, the senior Amazon executive who led AWS compute and AI services, will join Meta in the coming weeks to work on its data center build-out.
Meta hasnβt committed to becoming a cloud provider, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the idea is on the table. He told shareholders in May that companies were regularly approaching Meta to pay for access to its AI models or spare computing capacity β a business that would put Meta in competition with cloud providers it now relies on, including AWS.
At Meta, Brown will report to infrastructure chief Santosh Janardhan, according to the WSJ report. Janardhan co-leads Meta Compute, an initiative Zuckerberg launched in January to plan the companyβs data center buildout. Meta has said it expects to spend $125 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures this year, much of it tied to AI data centers.
Amazon isnβt commenting on the report. Weβve contacted Meta for confirmation and details.
Brownβs departure from AWS was announced on Wednesday, with a warmly worded message from AWS CEO Matt Garman giving no indication that Amazon would try to challenge or restrict his new role on competitive grounds.
AWS has gone to court before to enforce noncompete agreements against departing executives, suing two AWS leaders who left for Google Cloud in 2019 and 2020, respectively. But such agreements have grown harder to enforce. California bars them almost entirely, and Washington β Amazonβs home state β enacted a near-total ban this year, though it doesnβt take effect until mid-2027.
Garmanβs message said Brown had decided to take βa new role outside of the companyβ but did not say where he was going. Heβs remaining at AWS through the end of July to help with the transition.
At AWS, Brown will be succeeded by Dave Treadwell, a longtime Amazon executive who has run the technology behind the companyβs retail operations and spent 27 years at Microsoft before joining Amazon in 2016. He takes over AWS Compute and ML Services on Aug. 1.
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