The only game company that has actually invested in Stadia and Luna is Ubisoft. That's definitely not a good reason for me to get into either ecosystem lol. Stadia shutdown their first party studios a year ago to just focus on third party games. Stadia is definitely on life support with Google's history of abandoning projects.

Luna, idk what Amazon will do with it, or for how long. You would think they would at least find a way to put New World on the service with it being Amazon's first successful game, albeit it's crumbling, but at least it would be something first party related.

Google and Amazon. All that money they have is why they got into this. Yet they are being so cheap and lazy they are failing miserably. It's absurd. MS succeeded because they actually spent money to get into gaming. I've never seen such cheapness out of ultra-rich companies that I can recall.

I always wondered what happened to double helix studios after Amazon bought them. Looks like they are doing great things, New World looks incredible! 

I imagine they are being pressured to follow the safer route: mobile games. Core games are not as profitable as gachas and microtransaction-riddled mobile games. Too much spending for games that end up discounted after a couple of months. Plus, Google already makes a killing on android, so why bother with this bigger projects?

Probably going the way Stadia is going atm. As in there's not much demand for it and have a huge amount of stock of controllers stockpiled that they have to shift.

That and AGS having issues of their own in their own studio's.

Then why did MS do that and continues to do it?

I think the answer is something I've been saying for a while now. It's about the ecosystem. They've got all these different products/services. If a person gets one service/product, and if it is a good product/service, then they are more likely to trust that same company with another product/service. If that company has more to offer, then they have more to sell to these loyal customers. Let's take Microsoft for example:

Office 365, Surface, Xbox Game Studios, Windows OS, Teams, etc.

These big tech companies aren't getting into hardcore gaming for the direct profits from those games, but rather all these areas collectively. They know if someone buys an xbox, or games on PC with an Xbox, and they have a good experience, then they are nudged, even if just slightly, towards trying out their other products. Most people don't like to spread out their services, having all kinds of accounts, logins, different systems to learn, etc. Apple showed us all that there is massive potential in monopolizing whole consumer groups and now MS, Google, Amazon, AT&T, and others are trying.

If there isn't some kind of annual subscription within the next 10 years that includes Office 365, Gamepass, Free Windows OS Updates/New Versions, paid features for software like Teams, perhaps even some kind of hardware bundle like with Surface computers/phones or xboxes, I will be shocked. It's all about getting recurring business from individual consumers for as many of their needed services as possible.

Microsoft started a long time ago, back when console gaming was still the hottest part of gaming. Plus, Microsoft bet for the long game, they lost millions until the XBox division started making money. They already have the brand recognition, the IPs, the hardware and the services figured out. Plus, Microsoft is not the biggest player in the mobile market by far, their results on that market have never been more than mediocre. I imagine that, if Microsoft had tried to enter the gaming market for the first time in the 2010s, they would've end up doing something similar to Google and Amazon.

Yeah MS have decades worth of experience built up with people who have worked on video games over the years. Whereas Google and Amazon in comparison are more tech focused companies looking in from fresh. MS already the foundations laid out for them with their first party (Xbox Game Studios) and have good working relations with third parties and can offer stuff that others simply cannot. Id imagine it being quite hard for any company to come in competitively when competition is so strong and already well established with their ecosystem.

In any case Amazon has a lot of duds under its belt as games go, and perhaps they'll get better with time. So far it doesn't look like they'll go against companies like Microsoft (yet and maybe never) who have major IP's and a brand recognition that frankly dwarfs Amazon, Google, FB or whoever at least in terms of gaming and services - not mobile.