Google recently launched video game streaming service Stadia alongside Apple, which released Arcade, its own streaming technology-based collection of video game titles available across its devices. Now Amazon is also stepping up its own move for a slice of the increasingly lucrative video games sector. The ecommerce and cloud computing giant, however, is taking the approach of producing its own gaming titles and has ploughed hundreds of millions of dollars into its own games studio – Relentless.

The first fruits of that quiet investment into Relentless will be seen in May when the new Amazon video games studio officially launches its first title – Crucible, that plays to a science fiction narrative.

With a projected 2020 industry revenue of $160 billion, double the combined value of the recorded music and film box office sectors, worth a respective $19 billion and $43 billion, it is perhaps only a surprise that the tentacles of more tech giants didn’t reach out for video gaming sector earlier. And those projections were made before the Covid-19 pandemic became a reality. Video gaming is one of the industries to benefit from the lockdown measures forcing people around the world to stay home for several weeks.

Microsoft, through its Xbox gaming console, has been a long-time player in the video games sector. But until now it was up against relatively smaller competitors like Nintendo and Sony. Both are, in the bigger picture, huge corporations. But even their financial resources are dwarfed by those of the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon.

Relentless is not Amazon’s first experience of the video gaming sector. The company already owns Twitch, the platform that live streams the world’s best gamers, and millions of less talented gamers, over the web. Every day around 15 million users watch others playing video games, or live stream their own efforts. Its daily figures have also surged during the coronavirus lockdown.

Twitch’s service will be further expanded in the summer with the launch of an interactive games platform that will let users play with and against each other and star gamers.

Mike Frazzini, Amazon’s vice president for game services and studios told the New York Times, who first revealed the company’s behind-the-scenes investment in Relentless:

“The big picture is about trying to take the best of Amazon and bringing it to games.We have been working for a while, but it takes a long time to make games and we’re bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making games.”

While no official figures on the size of Amazon’s investment into Relentless have been revealed, it is said to have been the company’s “most significant investment in original entertainment since Amazon began producing television and films for Amazon Prime”.

That would put the scale of the investment comfortably into hundreds of millions. With the budgets now being poured into video games production set to soar as the biggest players enter the industry and competition heats up, the winners should ultimately prove to be gamers.

The industry saw significant leaps forward for years, since taking off in the 1980s, as processing power quickly increased. However, over the last decade the pace of that development has slowed as games studios caught up with the potential offered by modern consoles and computers. The arrival of tech’s big guns can be expected to accelerate the evolution of the gaming sector once again. Gamers everywhere will be licking their lips at what future years have in store for them.