Amazon announces streaming gaming service Luna, launching next month

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  The now-standard streaming-game-service shot of titles running on many different kinds of screens. [credit: Amazon ]

Roughly 20 months after rumors first emerged of Amazon's entry into the streaming-gaming space, the e-commerce giant and Twitch parent is today ready to officially unveil its plans. Next month, Amazon Luna will start extending early access invitations to players from the mainland United States who request them. The service will stream games running on Amazon Web Services servers to Fire TV, Windows, Mac, and iOS devices initially (with Android support coming weeks later).

That iOS support might be a bit surprising, given the onerous restrictions Apple has placed on streaming-gaming apps before they can be listed on the iOS App Store. But Amazon is getting around those restrictions by running Luna as a "progressive web application" that runs on iOS only in the Safari browser, without an App Store listing at all. That could impact the service's visibility and ease of access to many iOS users, but it also eliminates the 30 percent revenue cut Apple demands from most App Store services.

"We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today," Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis told Engadget.

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