Twitch Prime is now Prime Gaming — what you need to know

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New name, same gaming benefits

Prime Gaming
(Image credit: Amazon)

Update: We broke down everything you need to know about Amazon Prime Gaming

Goodbye Twitch Prime, hello Prime Gaming. Amazon has officially rebranded its gaming service that comes included with Amazon Prime, but fret not — virtually nothing else has changed.

For those unfamiliar, Twitch Prime encompasses a series of gaming-related benefits for anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription. Those perks include monthly free PC games, exclusive in-game content and a monthly free Twitch subscription that you can use to support your streamer of choice. None of those benefits are going away; they'll simply fall under the Prime Gaming banner now.

So what else has changed? Not a whole lot. A press release claims that the 150-million-plus Prime members around the globe can "get even more value out of their Prime membership with the best of gaming," but it's unclear if Amazon will add benefits or increase the amount of new monthly games.

There's also a rebranded Prime Gaming site that lets you easily claim any games or in-game loot that come with your subscription.

This rebranding could simply be to bring Twitch Prime in line with the naming convention of Amazon's other major services, such as Prime Video and Prime Music. But some, including Paul Tassi at Forbes, are speculating that this could signal a shift towards Amazon trying to grow its gaming offerings even further, potentially with its own Stadia-like streaming service that's been codenamed Project Tempo.

Amazon is also getting into the games development business, having released an online shooter dubbed Crucible earlier this year with a massively multiplayer online game dubbed New World due for release in 2021. However, Crucible launched with numerous issues and went back into beta after release so that the team can improve it. 

Whatever Amazon's long-term intentions are, Amazon Prime members and Twitch streamers can rest assured that Prime Gaming hasn't heralded any major changes to how things work. At least not yet. 

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Michael Andronico
Michael Andronico

Mike Andronico is Senior Writer at CNNUnderscored. He was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide, where he wrote extensively on gaming, as well as running the show on the news front. When not at work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.