Amazon’s New World — hands-on in a massive sandbox MMO

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
February 8, 2019
Updated June 20, 2025
5 min

In my first foray roaming the world of Amazon‘s New World, I came upon some animals. I chose to run away from the bear, and I chased after the wild turkey instead. That summed up how powerful I was feeling as a small creature in this vast space.

New World is a sandbox massively multiplayer online game set during the 17th century. I saw it at a preview event staged by Amazon. The studio, formerly known as Double Helix, has been working on the game for more than five years. And from what I saw of the world, it’s a big and ambitious project.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.