Amazon spent 15 years failing miserably trying to beat Steam.jpg
Damn. Amazon really spent 15 years trying to beat Steam lololol. Another W for Chad GabeN.
As the VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we tried to take down Steam but failed every single time. We were at least 250 times bigger than Steam and used every resource at our disposal. But in the end, 'Goliath' lost. Hereโs why: The attempt to challenge Steam started 15 years ago, way before I became VP. But we never cracked the code. Not under my leadership, nor anyone else's. First, we tried buying our way in. We acquired a small PC game store called Reflexive Entertainment to scale up, but it had zero effect. Next, we bought Twitch and built our own PC game store. We figured Twitch gamers would naturally start buying games from our platform. We were wrong. Finally, we launched 'Luna,' a cloud gaming service that didn't require a high-end PC. Google launched 'Stadia' around the same time, but neither gained any traction. Despite giants like Amazon and Google jumping in, the relatively tiny Steam maintained its powerful lead. Our biggest mistake was underestimating why Steam is successful. Steam wasn't just a game store. It was a platform that combined a shop, a social network, a game library, and a trophy case all in one. That combination provided a powerful experience for gamers. On the other hand, Amazon believed that 'scale and visibility attract customers.' We overlooked the power of existing user habits. We didn't validate our core assumptions before developing new solutions. The truth was, gamers already had the perfect solution in Steam, and they had no reason to move just because a new platform showed up. To succeed, we needed to create something overwhelmingly better, not just a simple alternative. We failed to do that. Scale alone doesn't guarantee success. We should have understood our customers deeply and analyzed their behavior before making big moves. Reflecting on these failures, I've realized once again that true innovation starts with properly identifying the customer's problem.
The problem with giants like Amazon: They don't want to make something valuable for the consumer. They want to make something valuable for the shareholders and investors.
"Users are roasting Amazon for its typical corporate-brained approachโprioritizing shareholder value over actual gamer needsโwhile acknowledging that Steam's ecosystem is currently an untouchable fortress."
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