Amazon release free game engine – Lumberyard

This week Amazon has released a free game engine called Lumberyard. The engine can currently create games for Windows, Xbox One, and PS4, and the company says support for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and the Oculus Rift are all “coming soon.”

Early signs indicate a capable game engine – according to The Verge: ‘Its visuals technology is based on CryEngine, a set of popular and powerful development tools that the company licensed from Crytek, and includes all the usual bells and whistles — from particle effects and and real-time water dynamics, to “vegetation tools” for super-realistic plants.’

This move from Amazon cleverly takes advantage of its array of services: for example users of Lumberyard would inevitably use the integrated Twitch (another Amazon subsidiary and market leader) in order to add video streaming. In addition to this, whilst users do not have to buy server time from Amazon, they cannot use rival cloud services. All of this meaning that if Lumberjack spawned a highly popular game, Amazon would retain a lot of control over that game’s success.

Check out Lumberyard’s launch site here: http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/details/