So… Amazon just announced the beta release of it’s own cross platform game engine called Lumberyard. The new platform is based on CryEngine technology and takes advantage of the storage of the AWS Cloud and can engage fans via Twitch. (Last year, Amazon reportedly made a multi million dollar investment in Crytek’s Cryengine, so this definitely clears up what that was all about.)
Lumberyard is currently PC only, but it is totally FREE and seems positioned to directly compete with Unreal, Unity and even Cryengine.
According to Amazon:
“With Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, your designers and engineers with little to no backend experience can add cloud-connected features to a game in as little as minutes (such as a community news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution) through drag-and-drop visual scripting.”
Does Lumberyard support VR?
“Yes. We have been actively working on VR within Lumberyard for some time now, and it looks great. We are currently upgrading our Oculus VR support to Rift SDK 1.0, which was released by Oculus in late December. We wanted to finish upgrading to Rift SDK 1.0 before releasing the first public version of VR support within Lumberyard, which will be included in a future release soon.”
What device platforms does Lumberyard support?
“Lumberyard currently supports PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Mobile support for iOS and Android devices is coming soon, along with additional support for Mac and Linux. Note that Sony and Microsoft only permit developers who have passed their screening process to develop games for their platforms.”
Wow… Just wow…
We will be investigating this in much more detail and will keep you all updated as we process this. This is huge!
Sean Earley is the Executive Editor of AR/VR Magazine & co-founder of RobotSpaceship Podcast Network. He is the Director of New Biz Development and Publishing at KEMWEB, a musician, producer & consultant. He loves guitars, VR and coffee.
