Public response to Google Stadia has not been kind, but that’s not dissuading other major tech giants from building similar game streaming competitors. Microsoft’s xCloud is rapidly progressing through beta, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is taking off despite reticence from some publishers, and now it seems Amazon is working on something similar: Project Tempo.
Project Tempo has been briefly detailed in a report from the New York Times, though there’s little concrete info on what the service will look like. The report says “people close to Project Tempo said that the company had hoped to introduce an early version this year but that it could slip into 2021 amid coronavirus disruptions.”
News of Project Tempo is trickling as Amazon’s gaming efforts have started to actually come to fruition, even after years of high-profile developer turnover and occasional layoffs have made things look shaky – from an outside perspective, at least. But both the shooter Crucible and the MMO New World are scheduled to launch next month, so we’re going to start seeing how these big projects are turning out soon.
Amazon Game Studios was founded to create social games, but in 2014 announced plans to enter the triple-A space, and in 2016 announced three titles: Crucible, New World, and Breakaway. Breakaway was cancelled in 2018.