Jeff Bezos himself took to Twitter to praise the Amazon Games division for its first success with New World, the MMORPG launched on September 28th for PC (Steam).
Jeff Bezos mentioned the previous failures and setbacks encountered by Amazon in its gaming efforts. As a reminder, the MOBA game Breakaway was canceled while still in development, and the Battle Royale-like title Crucible flopped so soundly that it had to be sunsetted just a few months after its debut.
(2/2) The two articles are only 8 months apart. https://t.co/EbTVhnrJpA
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 1, 2021
New World had a lot to prove, then, and so far it seems to be succeeding. We reported yesterday that over a million players accessed the game on its first day of operation, and the popularity continues to grow with a new concurrent player peak of 801K set just ten hours ago according to SteamDB.
This level of success surprised even Amazon, which was forced to spin up many new servers as the existing ones were swarmed by players, causing long queues to enter the game world. Speaking to PC Gamer, Rich Lawrence highlighted this as the biggest problem during this launch week:
Absolutely it was the scale of demand. Which on the one hand, great! We're enthused by player interest in the game. But we didn't have anywhere near this strong an indication from pre-orders or beta—we were happy with both, to be clear, but the numbers grew so quickly and so close to launch it caught us by surprise, I have to admit.
Amazon Games has the full backing of the new overall CEO Andy Jassy, who replaced Jeff Bezos earlier this year. Jassy said at the time success would come if the division kept working hard, and New World may just be proving him right already.
The division has big plans going forward, including publishing Lost Ark early next year and the first game by Glowmade in the future, in addition to its own unannounced projects.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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