Youtube Gaming: New Twitch competitor?
Jun. 12, 2015Youtube Gaming: New Twitch competitor?
Today, the Official Youtube Blog made the announcement that they will refocus their gaming efforts into a mega-brand: “Youtube Gaming”
The post reads:
As a kid, I spent hours on the living room couch playing video games with friends, taking turns trying to beat Ganon in “Ocarina of Time” and trading Pokémon until I had all 151. Soon controller passing and Game Boy link cables gave way to network multiplayer and PC LAN parties. Eventually, my living room became a virtual one, with a network of gamers sharing experiences and discoveries.
Today, the gaming world is much more diverse than the one I grew up with, and the community has created new formats that have made gaming more collaborative and interactive. On YouTube, gaming has spawned entirely new genres of videos, fromlet’s plays,walkthroughs, andspeedrunstocookingandmusic videos. Now, it’s our turn to return the favor with something built just for gamers.This summer, we’ll launchYouTube Gaming, a brand new app and website to keep you connected to the games, players, and culture that matter to you, with videos, live streams, and the biggest community of gamers on the web—all in one place.
YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favorite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else. From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.
Keeping up with these games and channels is now super easy, too. Add a game to your collection for quick access whenever you want to check up on the latest videos. Subscribe to a channel, and you’ll get a notification as soon as they start a live stream. Uncover new favorites with recommendations based on the games and channels you love. And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe.”
Live streams bring the gaming community closer together, so we’ve put them front-and-center on the YouTube Gaming homepage. And in the coming weeks, we’ll launch an improved live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube. On top of existing features likehigh frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time. We’re also creating single link you can share for all your streams.
YouTube Gaming will be available this summer, starting in the U.S. and U.K. We’re building this just for gamers—so we want to hear from you about how we can make it the best way to connect with your community. If you’re atE3next week, come by our booth for an early look at everything we’ve been working on. If not, tune in live from home atyoutube.com/e3, head over togaming.youtube.comand follow us@YouTubeGamingand you’ll be the first to know when YouTube Gaming is ready for you to play with.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
Fexelea
MMO raider by day and guide writer by night, Fex enjoys multiplatform gaming, good books and animes, and streaming with a cold beer.
Smaller YouTube channels will risk it for a chance to become a well known channel. To many of them this is their chance. I don’t think they see it as much of a risk. Go big or go home etc.
Cas
In my eyes, this is a good thing for anyone serious about gaming on YouTube (like me)
Twitch, for most YouTubers, is little more than a hobby. Getting partnered with Twitch is a absolute nightmare, plus the service itself is pretty inconsistent even for those who have the best connections.
By comparison, YouTube’s live broadcast service is more consistent, but a complete pain to set up. If YouTube gaming simplifies this, a lot of people will make the switch over.
Added to that, the ability to follow games will help Let’s Players like me reach new audiences. I only cover a handful of games on my channel so the help with content discovery is always welcome.
Content ID can be an issue, but if I’m honest, it’s more of an embuggerance than a real problem. It’s definitely gotten a lot better in the last year or so
Why would anyone risk it? Youtube fairly regularly has it’s policies abused, prominent YT people are constantly at risk of having their channel and livelyhood destroyed by content ID. Why switch from a service that doesn’t pull that crap to one that does? What good is some extra money if SEGA gets to swoop in and destroy your livelyhood at a whim because you mention shining force?
(BTW several YT people refuse to cover SEGA now because they’ve done exactly that)
To be honest I think youtube could spell the end of twitch if they did this.
People who currently have prominent youtube channels could transfer over to this and to be honest Youtube could probably offer more money as wel because they’re owned by google- in terms of financial clout twitch cannot compete.
It should be quite simple for them- outcompete twitch in terms of pay structure, eliminate twitch, decrease payment once they are the sole competitor.
We shall see how they go though.. It depends if they’re willing to go extremely cut throat in their approach or if they think competition would be better
If you don’t monotize….. maybe
If you do then twitch wins due to content ID :/
In my opinion sitting in a room of 3-4 others playing one game together will never truly be replaced. Face to face gaming in the same room is just the best thing you can do.
Though I do admit playing games like Destiny with others over the internet is fun, the couch coop of games like Borderlands are simply irreplaceable for me
Unless they fix their content ID systems problems (in that it’s regularly abused my malicious or incompetent devs or publishers) I don’t see it really competing with twitch. Why would anyone bother switching over when they know YT will screw them and twitch won’t?
