Amazon brings cloud gaming into Prime Video

Amazon announced on Thursday that it is bringing games to Prime Video by integrating its Luna cloud gaming service into the streaming platform. Titles including “Hogwarts Legacy,” “EA Sports FC 26,” “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,” “Clue,” and “Taboo” are available starting today on Fire TVs in the U.S. and U.K.

With the move, Amazon is hoping games can turn Prime Video into a one-stop entertainment destination, borrowing a strategy from Netflix, which has increasingly embraced party games over the past several years. Since Amazon already operates a gaming service in Luna, folding it into its existing streaming app extends a capability it already had rather than building a new one.

Alongside third-party titles and cult classics like “Taboo,” the library also includes games from Amazon’s own gaming division, including its “Courtroom Chaos” titles and the co-op card battler “Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite.” Until now, games on Luna were accessible only through the cloud gaming platform’s stand-alone app for Prime members; now they sit next to Prime Video’s movies and TV shows behind a new “Games” tab.

Amazon says its vision is to remove barriers to gaming and make it accessible to anyone regardless of experience or budget. The company frames Luna as a way to reach a much broader audience by removing the need for expensive consoles or gaming PCs, making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows. Prime members can open the “Games” tab on Prime Video and start playing on their TV with a controller or their phone.

“For a lot of people, games have been harder to find than they should be,” Jeff Gattis, general manager of gaming at Amazon, said in a press release. “Bringing Luna inside Prime Video allows Prime members to discover games more naturally, and if they see one they like, they click it and they’re in. That’s less time searching and more time playing great games included with their Prime membership.”

Amazon says it will add new games every month, and it also plans to bring games to additional devices and countries in the coming months.

Why it matters

Folding cloud gaming into an app people already open, instead of a stand-alone one, is a low-cost way for platforms to raise engagement without new hardware — and a template Amazon can extend as it adds devices and markets in the coming months.