As of this morning, anyone who has received, or will receive, a beta invite to Luna, Amazon’s brand new cloud gaming service, can access the Ubisoft+ channel that’s filled with—you guessed it—Ubisoft games like Assassins’ Creed Odyssey. What Amazon didn’t initially announce was the price of subscribing to that game channel. But according to Ubisoft, users will have to pay $15 a month to get access to 100+ games on Luna, which may or may not include premium or special editions of games.
But $15 a month is the price of a regular Ubisoft+ subscription not connected to Luna, though anyone who already has a subscription can connect it to their Luna account if they have it. There’s no doubling up on the monthly fee, but still, with Luna’s $6 monthly subscription, anyone who wants also to play Ubisoft games on Luna will have to pay a total of $21 a month. (But Amazon says you don’t need a Luna subscription to play Ubisoft games.) When you take into account the price of other cloud gaming services, like GeForce Now ($5/mo), Stadia ($10), xCloud ($15/mo with Game Pass Ultimate), or Shadow ($15/mo for an entire virtual PC), $21 a month is a lot, especially considering Luna is the only one out of all those that doesn’t offer the ability to purchase games individually.
It seems Amazon is treating Luna like its Prime Video service, where users can add channels like HBO, Shudder, CBS All Access, and others for a monthly fee. And for the time being, you don’t have to have a Luna subscription to play Ubisoft games on it, just like how you don’t need a Prime subscription to use Prime Video. But with Luna, since there’s no a la carte purchasing, as soon as you stop paying the monthly subscription fee, the games will disappear, as is the case with all other game subscription services. Prime Video, in contrast, lets you purchase or rent individual titles.
What’s more interesting is that by the end of the year, Ubisoft+ subscribers will be able to play certain Ubisoft games on Stadia during a beta period, with no Stadia Pro subscription required.
According to Ubisoft: “By linking accounts, subscribers will also enable full cross-progression support for games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla across all platforms.”
What’s unclear is what will happen after the Luna beta period ends, and if Stadia users who already own Ubisoft games on that platform will be able to access them on Luna. Gizmodo has reached out for clarification and will update this article if/when we hear back.
The idea of being able to play a single game on multiple cloud gaming platforms without losing progress sounds interesting in theory, but in practice I’m not sure how much of an incentive that is for users. It’s an easy way for users to compare Luna to Stadia, and maybe Amazon wants to show off how great its cloud gaming service is. Time will tell, but now that we officially have our hands on Amazon Luna, we’re looking forward to seeing what it has to offer.
Clarification 11/10/20 9:00pm ET: This article has been updated to reflect that users won’t need a Luna subscription to play Ubisoft games on the platform. As long as users have an Ubisoft+ subscription, they can play those games on Luna. However, it’s not clear if this will last post-beta.