Amazon.com, Inc. Introduces Amazon Lumberyard, But What Is It?

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) introduced on Tuesday Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross platform 3D game engine for developers to create high-quality games and connect the games to Amazon's AWS Cloud and engage with fans on Twitch.

"By starting game projects with Lumberyard, you can spend more of your time creating great gameplay and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building a game engine and managing server infrastructure," Amazon noted.

Access to full C++ source is included with the download of Lumberyard. The new platform can also be used for non-game purposes, such as architecture, simulations and animated movies.

Lumberyard is also compatible with VR and the company is upgraded its Oculus VR support to Rift SDK 1.0, which was released by Oculus in late December.

Shares of Amazon were trading higher by nearly 2 percent Tuesday morning at $495.68.