John Smedley, pictured at GamesBeat 2013, is heading a new Amazon game studio in San Diego.
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Ex-Sony Online chief John Smedley starts Amazon game studio after Kickstarter failure

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

John Smedley, the former chief of Sony’s online business, has joined Amazon to create a new game studio in San Diego, Calif.

The move is one of many by Amazon to lock up talent in the high end of the game business, where the company is pitching the combination of its Twitch livestreaming and Lumberyard game engine as bid for legitimacy.

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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.