Amazon cancels Crucible: What does this mean for Amazon's approach to gaming?


Games come out and eventually get turned off a lot. It's just a natural progression now that games are more online and multiplayer is so important.

That's what you expect to happen now. It's a little bit sad, sure, but it's life.

What you don't expect, is what happened to a game called Crucible. Now, there's a chance you've not even heard of Crucible, so let us fill you in.

Also, it's getting cancelled, even though it was out for a little bit. It's complicated.

What is Crucible, and why is it going?

Crucible is Amazon's free-to-play shooter. It released to fairly negative reviews and a rather cold reception.

In fact, it was so poor that it got put back into a closed beta after release, which is hardly a conventional thing to do.

Well, in the "FINAL CRUCIBLE DEVELOPER UPDATE", it was announced that Crucible would be closing down because "ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible"

Sometimes it's better to just cut your losses and stop when something isn't working, and that seems to be the case for Crucible. This isn't the only Amazon game in development though, and this whole thing will undoubtedly affect how people view the games they're making.

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What does this mean for Amazon's games?

Overall, this doesn't bode well for anything else that Amazon puts out.

It's hard to get excited about anything the company will do when you know they're willing to just cut the chord. Sure, it makes sense, but if this was going to happen anyway, it makes the Closed Beta move even more perplexing.

It also makes you wonder why this couldn't be turned around. There are plenty of games that launched to worse responses than the ones here, yet turned it around. Surely, Amazon can afford to make it work?

Ultimately, it impacts our confidence as consumers. If they're willing to just stop games, then what's the point in us investing our time and money into them? Sure, it might change if the next game is a smash hit, but even then, how long will it be supported for?

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