Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann “Feels Good” About The Success Of New World, Blames Crowded BR Space For Crucible's Failure

As we all know, New World didn’t have the most stellar of launches, what with all the server congestion, related exploits, and the like. But it seems things have leveled out a bit, and while some people still have a bad taste in their mouth, other people are having a good time. Even though it’s dropped from the top spot on Steam, it’s still the fifth most-played game of all time on the service.

In light of that, it might make sense that Amazon Games' VP Christoph Hartmann feels pretty okay about how things have shaken out, a feeling he expressed in an interview with NME. Telling the outlet that he’s had both hits and failures, he notes that he gets “very humble if something works,” going on to add the general thought is that he’s glad, but then wonders what’s next.

Hartmann also goes on to compare the video game industry to the music industry while talking about one of Amazon’s less successful attempts, Crucible. He points out that it failed because there was just too much going on in the battle royale space at that point and likens it to how the popularity of some types of music cycle in and out. Crucible didn’t work because of the crowded space, but New World is a different story because it was time for MMOs to cycle back in. “The reason we made an MMO is because everyone went away from it.”

It seems like Amazon might not be trying to do as many games in the future as well. According to Hartmann, one of the things he learned prior to coming on board is to make fewer games, focus on them, and only ship when ready.

On a less-than-chipper note, it seems that Amazon’s going to have to keep focusing on fixing things in New World for a while longer. According to a report on MassivelyOP the game is suffering yet another exploit. This time the culprit is malicious chat code and a flaw in the chatbox that allows players to “run malicious image code”. If a player hovers over it with their mouse, it may cause the client to crash. It seems there are multiple reports of this issue across all of the usual venues – Reddit, the forums, etc. For now, Amazon’s only saying that they’re aware of the issue. We’re sure someone is working on it.