Luna, Amazon’s homegrown cloud gaming service, has been growing relatively slowly in the year since it soft-launched. In all that time, it’s been slowly growing its main channel, Luna+, as well as its only other channel, Ubisoft+. Now it’s starting to grow: Amazon Luna is preparing to launch more channels, new platforms, and also a co-op mode that simulates local multiplayer without locality.
For starters, Amazon Luna will now be available on Fire tablets and Chromebooks, in addition to all of the other platforms it’s currently available on. At the moment, you can play Luna on PC, Mac, iOS devices, Android devices, and Fire TVs. It’s not exactly clear if the games will fully support touch controls on Fire tablets, as the announcement says: “With a touch controller, customers have the chance to try out games on their Fire tablet before upgrading their gaming experience with a Luna Controller or compatible controller.”
Amazon Luna is also rolling out a new channel called the Family Channel, which, as the name suggests, is a collection of games that are suitable for younger players, all rated E or E10+. At $2.99, it’s the least expensive Luna channel by far. There will be 35 games on the channel and the full list includes SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom — Rehydrated, Overcooked!, and DreamWorks Dragons: Dawn of New Riders. According to Luna’s press material, the company is going to add new games to the service, including the upcoming SkateBIRD.
The third major thing Amazon announced is Luna Couch, which it claims to offer a way to play local multiplayer games “without needing to be physically located together for game night.” The idea is that you can invite users to join you in a Couch gaming session in order to play games you’d ordinarily have to sit on a couch to play. If it sounds a lot like garden-variety online multiplayer — well, it is, but the advantage is that the person you invite doesn’t need to be an Amazon Luna subscriber, nor do they have to download the game.
Amazon also teased more channels in the near future, including “a new retro-gaming focused channel” with classic games from Atari, SNK, and the like. It’s not Xbox Game Pass yet, but it’s clear that’s the competition for which Luna is aiming.
For those who are subscribed to the Luna+ channel, Amazon recently announced its September games:
- Dice Legacy (September 9)
- Enter the Gungeon (coming soon)
- Olija (coming soon)