What to Know About Amazon Prime Gaming
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If you're looking to expand your gaming options, you may already have free access through Amazon.
What is Amazon Prime Gaming?
Amazon Prime Gaming is a gaming program that's free with Amazon Prime membership. It includes access to games that can be downloaded and kept on a PC, as well as the ability to play games on consoles and across devices using Amazon Luna, Amazon’s cloud gaming platform (which allows you to play on Apple devices, Android phones and some TVs). Some PC games require installing the Amazon Games app for access.
Prime Gaming also comes with a free channel subscription on Twitch, a streaming platform owned by Amazon that gamers use to share content of themselves playing their favorite games while providing commentary.
Amazon Prime Gaming rewards include special offers, upgraded in-game content and new bonus games made available to Prime members.
Earn up to $250/year in cash rewards
With a NerdWallet+ membership, it's easy to rack up rewards for the smart decisions you're already making, like checking your credit score.
How do you get Amazon Prime Gaming?
To get Prime Gaming, you’ll need to be a Prime member. A Prime membership costs $14.99 a month or $139.99 annually. If you’re in a free trial for Amazon Prime or Prime Video-only membership, you’re eligible to activate Prime Gaming (but video-only trials will not receive a Twitch channel subscription).
You may also be eligible for Prime Gaming if you have a Prime Student subscription, which is $69 per year with a six-month free trial. During the free trial period, you will be limited to receiving a Twitch channel subscription for one month.
Gaming Prime Day deals
This year, Amazon released 15 new free PC games for Prime members in the days leading up to its July Prime Day sale. During the two-day event, Prime Gaming subscribers also were offered additional free game downloads, including Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration.
How do you budget for Amazon Prime Gaming?
Entertainment services, like games and streaming, fall into the 30% section of the 50/30/20 budget framework. Under this budgeting system, 50% of income is used for essential needs including debt minimums, 30% for wants, and 20% for savings and extra payments to debt.
If you’re paying for Amazon Prime already, then the expense of Prime Gaming is factored into your budget since it's free with membership.
But if you’re not a Prime subscriber yet and want to be, you could look at other ways to trim down costs in your wants category to make room for a Prime subscription. You might decide to cancel other gaming subscriptions in favor of a Prime subscription because of its other benefits, such as fast shipping, video streaming and Prime Music.
You can also try before you buy with a free trial, which gives you access to all of the Prime benefits for 30 days before being billed.
