Amazon's AppStream lets developers stream games from cloud to any device

Amazon announced AppStream today, a new service that allows developers to harness the power of Amazon Web Services and stream games and apps from the cloud to any device.

In a video posted to the Amazon Web Services website, the company explains that AppStream is a flexible, low-latency service that renders applications in the AWS infrastructure before deploying it to mass-market devices. By allowing users to stream parts or all of the application from the cloud, this opens up opportunities for developers to make their apps and games available on many more devices.

Previously, if developers were to create apps natively for mass-market devices, they would often have to compromise by making something that particular devices were capable of running. If they wanted to create something bigger and more resource-intensive, they would have to turn to more powerful devices that had a limited audience.

With Amazon's AppStream, AWS handles the heavy lifting on the processing and rendering side of things, which allows developers to stream their apps to devices running FireOS, Android, iOS and Microsoft Windows. A Mac OS SDK is planned for 2014.

More information on Amazon AppStream can be found on the Amazon Web Services blog.