Amazon Luna is absorbing Prime Gaming and getting controller-free video games within the course of

After a couple of years of largely humming along in the background, Amazon’s recreation streaming service is receiving a little bit of an replace. Amazon Luna will nonetheless act as a recreation streaming service with a rotating library of free video games for Prime customers, however now, Amazon also plans to supply “GameNight,” a group of social social gathering video games which you could play with your mates with only a smartphone. The growth is about extra than simply new video games: Amazon’s Prime Gaming model is now additionally a part of Luna.

Amazon says the brand new GameNight assortment consists of over 25 multiplayer video games, some which are reinterpretations of basic video games like Indignant Birds, Exploding Kittens or Ticket to Journey, and others which are completely authentic and developed by Amazon, like Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg. If you happen to’ve performed any of Jackbox’s numerous multiplayer video games, GameNight appears to make use of the same setup. You load up the sport in Luna, whoever’s taking part in scans an onscreen QR code with their cellphone after which they will be part of the sport utilizing their machine as a controller.

The hope is that these smartphone-controlled video games will decrease the barrier to entry for anybody intimidated by a controller, or who hasn’t already taken benefit of Luna as a part of their Prime subscription. For everybody else, although, Amazon says the service is getting a group of recent high-profile video games within the close to future, together with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and Dave the Diver. As earlier than, should you’re prepared to pay for one in every of Amazon’s add-on subscriptions you possibly can add much more video games to your library, too. Not like GameNight video games, although, all of those titles would require a controller to play, whether or not it is Amazon’s Luna Controller or a Bluetooth controller related to the Luna app.

So far as Prime Gaming is anxious, Amazon’s not retiring the advantages of the plan, however relatively utilizing them to bolster Luna. Prime Gaming launched as Twitch Prime, a program that unlocked distinctive emotes, one free Twitch sub and free PC video games each month should you linked your Twitch and Amazon accounts. These advantages will nonetheless be accessible after Prime Gaming is retired, and Twitch says that any free PC video games you redeem will likely be accessible “wherever Amazon Prime is accessible as a part of Luna Commonplace.” That features areas the place you possibly can’t stream Luna but.

Whereas complicated, including extra video games and folding Prime Gaming into Luna means that Amazon views the service because the gaming challenge it is prioritizing transferring ahead. It would not have the library of Xbox Cloud Gaming and it is not clear if Amazon is as gun-ho about streaming as Microsoft is, but when the corporate is prepared to pay, providing extra video games and extra methods to play them looks as if a very good transfer.

Replace, October 1 2025, 6:07PM ET: The story and its headline have been up to date to incorporate particulars about Amazon’s adjustments to Prime Gaming.