Amazon Luna

Amazon Luna will drop Windows and Mac apps as it ‘doubles down’ on web app

Ben Schoon | Jun 5 2023 - 5:30 am PT

As cloud gaming continues to find its place, Amazon Luna is making a considerable change by unexpectedly pulling the plug on its PC and Mac apps.

When it launched, Amazon Luna offered support for playing games across multiple platforms, but often pointed to its apps on Windows PCs and Mac as the best way to play on those respective platforms. Meanwhile, Android and iOS users were pushed to a web app, which also later added support for Chromebooks.

But now, users aren’t being given the option to use that native app.

Amazon Luna has quietly removed the download links for its Windows PC and Mac apps from the web app, as our friend Duncan from CloudyGames first highlighted. This appears to be a very recent change based on a Reddit post that mentioned the Windows app from earlier this week.

In a statement to 9to5Google, Amazon confirmed the removal, adding that players were using the web app “significantly more” and that the company chose to “double down” on the web app as a result. The native apps will be “sunset” soon.

Customers on PCs and Macs can continue to access and play Luna from supported browsers. We saw customers were spending significantly more time playing games on Luna using their web browsers than on native PC and Mac apps. When we see customers love something, we double down. We optimized the web browser experience with the full features and capabilities offered in Luna’s native desktop apps so customers now have the same exact Luna experience when using Luna on their web browsers. We believe firmly in the future of cloud gaming and will be sunsetting the Luna PC and Mac native desktop apps so we can invest more time and resources innovating on behalf of our Luna customers.

Notably, this leaves the Amazon Luna app for Fire TV – which also works on Android TV and Google TV – as the only native app for Luna, as mobile devices are only supported through the web. It’s also a setup remarkably similar to Google Stadia, which never offered desktop apps, though that platform did offer an Android app before its shutdown earlier this year.