Amazon Game Studios hasn’t been what you would call a success story so far, but the company’s next CEO says he believes it eventually will be, if it persists. Amazon itself announced yesterday that Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO (or laterally, perhaps, to become chief executive), but it appears that this will not immediately change the company’s plans for its game studio. The new CEO, Andy Jassy, wants to continue.
Internal emails obtained by Bloomberg indicate that Jassy is willing to wait for the game studio to find its balance. “Having immediate success is obviously less stressful, but when it takes longer, it’s usually sweeter,” wrote Jassy in an email to the team. “I believe that this team will get there if we stay focused on what is most important.”
“Although we have not yet been consistently successful at AGS, I believe we will succeed if we persist,” he said.
“I haven’t been able to consistently” is a very kind way of saying that the studio hasn’t released a well-received game yet, having canceled Breakaway in 2018, killing Crucible’s brief launch last year and delaying its New World MMO to sometime this spring. They also canceled other unannounced projects.
A report from last week attributes much of the trial and error to internal dysfunction at Amazon Games Studios. The sources in this report put the blame on the feet of Amazon Game Studios boss Mike Frazzini, who reportedly has little experience with video games and would require developers to pursue the trends set by other popular games like Fortnite and Overwatch. Frazzini sent her own email to employees before Jassy. In it, he says that AGS has zero tolerance for the “brother culture”, also alleged in last week’s report.
As for his own influence, Frazzini says “we have learned and improved a lot along the way, including me, and we will continue to do so”, and that “making great games is difficult and we will not get everything right.”
The broader context here is that earlier this week the other tech giant who was trying to get into game development threw in the towel. Google announced that it would close the two Stadia game development studios to focus on partnering with external studios for the Stadia subscription library.