Is Amazon's Cloud Gaming Venture a Game Changer?

Amazon's (AMZN -2.56%) cloud gaming service, Luna, is now available. In this clip from "The Gaming Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 7, Motley Fool contributors Jose Najarro and Travis Hoium discuss their thoughts on Luna's foreseeable future and analyze how it might stack up against the competition.

Jose Najarro: Amazon has launched Luna. Luna is going to be their cloud gaming for anyone in the United States. I think it's pretty interesting. A lot of big companies are trying cloud gaming. I think one of the huge success stories right now has been Microsoft (MSFT -1.27%) with their Microsoft Game Pass. Then, we probably see one that continues doesn't show that kind of success story. The one that comes to mind is Google with Stadia. Right now, they have different price targets, some as high as $6 per month and some as low as $2.99 per month for all different types of gamers. Maybe you're just a gamer that focuses on retro games. Maybe you want more family style. If you have a family, they offer a lot of multiplayer games that you can just enjoy with the family. Or, if you're a more advanced general player and want to play some of the AAA games, they also have a service for that. I was wondering, any thoughts on Amazon going into cloud gaming? Do you think they're going to lean more to being a success story like how Microsoft has been or is it going to follow route to where Google [Alphabet (GOOG -1.10%)] has ended in this side, which is not that successful?

Travis Hoium: Maybe it will be a little bit in the middle. I do appreciate that they're doing this retro games channel. This brings me back to my childhood, so I appreciate that piece of it. The other thing to think about with Amazon though is they own Twitch, which is the gaming streaming service. Twitch is operated on its own under the Amazon company and brand for a long time. It's pretty easy to not know that Amazon owns Twitch, whether you're a user of Amazon or a user of Twitch. I think that's interesting to think about what their potential tie-ins could be between those two services. I think they have a better position in the market than somebody like Google. Google has done this a bunch of times where they get into something like Circle. What was the social media? I don't even remember it. It's so unmemorable. But, they develop these projects and then they just put them out there. Then, they don't do the legwork to get them going on the back-end. Whereas, Microsoft, has made a concerted effort for 20 plus years to become a dominant player in the gaming market. I don't necessarily think that Amazon is going to do that. This is a way for them to leverage AWS. They also have a gaming engine that they, I'm sure, would like more people to be using. They also have Twitch. It just fits in their business. It can be a nice small business, something like Apple (AAPL -1.22%) Arcade, which is something that we use at home because it's family friendly. That's the way I would look at it. It's a nice little add-on, not necessarily a game-changer for a company like Amazon.