Amazon has been trying to get you interested in cloud gaming for six years now. Luna was announced in the US in 2020, arrived in the UK in March 2023, and has spent most of that time as an app that most people scrolled straight past on their Fire TV home screen.
So Amazon has changed tactics. Instead of waiting for you to find Luna, it has put the games inside Prime Video.
As of this week, Prime members with a Fire TV in the UK (and the US) will find a new “Games” tab sitting in the Prime Video app, alongside the usual rows of films, series and live sport.
Select a game and you are playing within seconds. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, and no extra charge on top of your existing Prime membership.
It is a small interface change with a fairly large idea behind it, and it puts Amazon in the same territory as Netgem, which has been making almost exactly the same bet with its Pleio Freely box since November.
A Quick Reminder: What Is Luna?
If you have never used it, cloud gaming means the game itself runs on a remote server rather than on hardware in your living room.
The video is streamed to your TV in real time, and your button presses are sent back the other way. No console, no downloads, no updates, and no waiting twenty minutes for a patch before you can play.
Amazon recommends a sustained connection of at least 10Mbps, and that has been its guidance since Luna first launched in the UK.
In practice you will want a bit more headroom than that, particularly if other people in the house are streaming at the same time.
The reason any of this matters is hardware. A Fire TV Stick costs a fraction of a games console, and plenty of British households already have one plugged into a TV somewhere.
Amazon’s argument is that billions of people play games while only a few hundred million own a console or a gaming PC, and Luna is aimed squarely at everyone in that gap – people who might play if it did not require expensive kit and a weekend of setup.
Luna has been reshuffled more than once since 2023, and the tiers have been renamed along the way. What is included with Prime is now called Luna Standard.
What Prime Members Get
The headline is that a decent chunk of Luna’s library is included with Prime at no additional cost now.
Amazon points to EA Sports FC 26 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as examples of what Prime members can play, and says new games are added every month.
Alongside those sit the GameNight titles – party games designed for people who would never describe themselves as gamers.
That collection includes board game adaptations like Cluedo, Ticket to Ride and Taboo, and they work in a rather clever way: you scan a QR code on your TV screen, and your phone becomes the controller through its web browser. No app, no pairing, no setup.
Amazon is also using the integration to link games to the things you are already watching. The Masters of the Universe film is on Prime Video, and Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite is a co-op card battler on Luna where up to four players take on Hordak’s horde as He-Man, Skeletor and the rest.
There is also Courtroom Chaos: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, an AI-powered party game where players argue absurd cases in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the judge, played entirely on phones.
Schwarzenegger turns up again later this year in The Man with the Bag, a holiday film heading to Prime Video.
You can see the logic. Watch the film on Tuesday, play the game on Wednesday, all on the same subscription.
Fire TV Only, For Now
One catch worth flagging before you go looking for it: this Prime Video integration is Fire TV only at launch. If you use the Prime Video app on a smart TV, a Roku or a games console, the Games tab is not there.
That is an odd restriction for a feature built into an app that runs on almost everything, and it presumably comes down to Amazon wanting to control the experience on its own hardware first.
Amazon says more details on additional devices, countries and games will follow in the months ahead.
The standalone Luna app, meanwhile, remains available on a wider range of devices – Fire tablets, PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, phones, and select Samsung and LG TVs.
So the games have not gone anywhere. They are just not inside Prime Video unless you are on a Fire TV, such as the current Fire TV Stick 4K.
The Controller Question
Here is the practical catch, and it is the one most likely to trip people up.
The GameNight party titles work with a phone, which is fine. But most other games on Luna need an actual controller or a mouse and keyboard. Amazon does not put one in the box, because there is no box.
Amazon’s own Luna Controller costs £59.99, connects over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and lets you switch between screens without re-pairing. That is a fair chunk of money to spend on something included free with your subscription.
The cheaper route is that Luna also works with PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 controllers, Xbox controllers, and various other Bluetooth pads – so if there is a console in the house already, you may not need to buy anything at all.
There is also a free Luna Phone Controller app, though using a touchscreen as a gamepad is a compromise for anything beyond casual play.
If You Want More Games
Above the free-with-Prime tier sits Luna Premium at £8.99 a month, which was previously known as Luna+ and gives access to a larger library. There is also a separate Jackbox Games subscription at £3.99 a month for the party packs.
Neither is required. If you have Prime, you can ignore both and still have a proper library of games to work through.
Netgem Has Been Making The Same Bet
What makes this interesting is that Amazon is not the only company deciding that free TV boxes should also be games machines.
The Netgem Pleio, the UK’s first standalone Freely streaming puck, launched in November 2025 with a wireless gamepad in the box.
That was a slightly risky move – I said as much in my full review of the Pleio, because plenty of buyers will see a gamepad in the marketing, decide they are not gamers, and look elsewhere.
But Netgem has stuck with it. Cloud gaming on the Pleio comes through its Pleio Extra subscription, which also covers 150-plus extra FAST channels.
It is free for the first 12 months with the device, then £9.99 a month, and the library has grown past 300 games with a fresh batch arriving every month.
Last month’s drop was built around a World Cup FanZone and free sports.
This month has a different selection: Barbie: Horse Adventures leads seven new titles, joined by Boti: Byteland Overclocked, Under the Waves, Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile, Jewel Match, Aquascapes Collector’s Edition and True Fear: Forsaken Souls – Part 3.
There are also six new Extra ad-supported channels – NASCAR, History Hunters, Inside Crime, Deal Masters, World War TV and Mystery TV.
Netgem has also shared some numbers. According to the company, 55% of Pleio owners have tried gaming at least once, and those who stick with it average around two and a half hours a week.
That is not console-level engagement, but it is not nothing either, and it suggests that putting a controller in front of people who did not ask for one does change behaviour.
The Pleio settled at a permanent £99 in April. To mark the July update, Netgem has knocked £5 off on Amazon UK for a limited period, bringing it down to £94 including the gamepad.
Is This A Success Story Or A Rescue Mission?
The obvious reading of Amazon’s announcement is that Luna is doing well enough to deserve a bigger stage.
There is another possible reading, though – if your cloud gaming service is thriving as a standalone app, you do not need to relocate it into your video app to get people to notice.
The fact that Amazon is now placing games directly in front of Prime Video viewers, rather than trusting them to seek Luna out, suggests the numbers have not been where Amazon wanted them.
Jeff Gattis, GM of Gaming at Amazon, more or less says this in the announcement, noting that games have been harder for a lot of people to find than they should be, and that putting Luna inside Prime Video means less time searching and more time playing.
Discovery is a real problem, and this is a sensible solution to it.
Whether it works this time is a different question. Putting a Games tab next to your Tuesday night viewing lowers the barrier considerably, and Netgem’s figures suggest that lowering the barrier does get people playing.
Whether it converts casual curiosity into regular use is something we will only know in six months or a year.
For now, if you have a Fire TV and a Prime membership, there is a library of games sitting in an app you already open most evenings, and it costs you nothing to have a look.
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