Amazon Games' New World debuts in May 2020.

Amazon’s New World preview — Taking down a fort with siege guns and magic

Amazon postponed the launch of its New World massively multiplayer online role-playing game from July until 2021. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play it. A large beta test opens today for those who preordered the game.

The company is being careful about its entry into big-budget PC games, and so it is testing New World heavily, especially after the ill-fated launch of Crucible, a multiplayer shooting game, earlier this year. Crucible debuted in May without an extensive beta and then, to Amazon’s embarrassment, the company had to bring it back into closed beta testing in July. With New World, Amazon is making a multi-year bet on MMO gaming, and it wants to get it right through deliberate playtesting and revision.

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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.