Amazon GameLift Servers Now Support Newer EC2 Instance Generations

Hello Amazon GameLift devs,

We’ve got some exciting news to share with you today! As of now, Amazon GameLift Servers supports EC2 5th through 8th generation instances. This means you can take advantage of the latest and greatest in EC2 performance, efficiency, and flexibility when hosting your game servers.

With this update, we now support the full range of next-gen EC2 instances across three major families:

• M-series (General Purpose): A solid all-around option for most game workloads.
• C-series (Compute Optimized): Great for CPU-heavy games that need fast, snappy processing.
• R-series (Memory Optimized): Perfect for high-memory needs like complex simulations or large player sessions.

And here’s a quick breakdown of what the newer generations bring to the table:

• 5th Gen: Reliable performance on proven Intel hardware.
• 6th Gen: More choice — including AWS Graviton2 (ARM), Intel, and AMD — with improved price-performance.
• 7th Gen: Big performance gains thanks to DDR5 memory and enhanced networking.
• 8th Gen: Top-tier performance with the latest Graviton4 and Intel Xeon processors — ideal for demanding workloads.

You can also pick variants with local storage (d), enhanced networking (n), and your preferred processor architecture — whether that’s Intel (i), AMD (a), or Graviton (g).

We made this update to give you more flexibility when scaling and optimizing your game servers. Whether you’re trying to squeeze out more performance, reduce cost, or take advantage of newer architectures, we’ve got you covered.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think — and if you have feedback, questions, or want to share how you’re using these new instances, drop us a reply below!

To learn more, see the following What’s New Post.

As always, thanks for building with GameLift! Mark Choi | PM, Amazon GameLift