Why did Amazon lose to Steam?



Ethan Evans, former vice president of Amazon's gaming division, Prime Gaming, said that Amazon was 250 times larger than Steam, but lost out due to strategic mistakes.

Amazon tried to beat Steam, but despite being “250 times bigger,” it still lost

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/amazon-strategy



Evans worked at Amazon for more than 15 years before leaving the company in 2020. During Evans' tenure, Amazon expanded into video games with several acquisitions and strategies, including

acquiring the video streaming platform Twitch and the development studio Double Helix Games.

Amazon also signed a deal to develop a new Tomb Raider game and publishes MMO titles like Throne & Liberty and Lost Ark, but Evans said it 'wasn't enough to compete with Steam.'



'We're at least 250 times bigger than Steam, and we've tried everything. The first way we tried to get into the online game store market was through acquisitions. We bought a small PC game store called Reflexive Entertainment and tried to scale it, but that didn't work. Then we bought Twitch and started our own PC game store. Our assumption was, 'gamers are on Twitch, so naturally they'll buy from us,' but we were wrong.'

'Eventually, they launched

Luna , a game streaming service that didn't require a high-end PC to play. Around the same time, Google tried to do the same with Stadia , but neither gained much traction. Steam has always dominated, despite being a relatively small company compared to Amazon and Google.'

'Amazon assumed that size and name recognition was what would bring customers in, but they never really examined the core of it. Steam worked great: the store, the social network, the library, the trophy case. We misunderstood what it was that was drawing customers in.'



'The reality is, gamers have been on the right platforms since the beginning, and they're not going to switch just because a new platform came along,' Evans added, pointing out that size alone isn't enough to challenge Valve and Steam.

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