Amazon has revealed Luna, its cloud-gaming platform and the latest competitor to xCloud and Stadia. It goes live in early access this October, and sign-ups to receive an invite are available now. Luna will support Fire TV, PC, Mac and iOS devices at first in early access, with Android support coming soon.
More than 100 games will be available at launch, stretching across genres – action, adventure and platformer. These include Resident Evil 7, Control, Panzer Dragoon; A Plague Tale, Innocence and The Surge 2, Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair Iconoclasts, GRID, ABZU and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.
On top of that, Amazon announced a partnership with Ubisoft, which will give subscribers to the channel access to Ubisoft titles in up to 4K resolution, including Assassins Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. The company says this is the first of many channels coming to Luna.
It will cost $5.99 a month to gain access to the Luna+ game channel, which is an early access period rate. We reckon this will probably go up to something comparable to Stadia’s $10.99 a month once the platform has found its feet. There’s no UK price yet. For $5.99, you get yourself resolutions of 4K/60fps for select titles and the ability to play on two devices simultaneously.
There’s also Twitch integration in Luna. Luna subscribers will see videos on individual game pages showcasing streamers playing that title, and clicking on one will start Twitch. On Twitch, if a streamer is playing a game in the Luna library, viewers will be able to click a link and start playing it via Luna themselves, as long as they’re a paid member of Amazon’s cloud gaming service.
These are similar to the still-missing YouTube-connected social features that Google outlined at the launch of Stadia.
Though Luna will be available on iPhones and iPads from day one, it’s not a native iOS app. Luna is a progressive web application (PWA), meaning it’s technically a browser-based program that only looks like a standard app.
There’s no release date as of yet, but if you’re in the US, you can request an invitation for early access right now.
