YouTube announced YouTube Gaming two months ago where they sought to have a brand new website and app that will cater for anything gaming. They claimed that gaming content on YouTube has “spawned entirely new genres of videos” and they saw it fit to create an entirely new website & app for gamers.
According to reports, YouTube Gaming will be launched today where they’ll launch the website plus apps for both Android and iOS. YouTube says it will “keep you connected to the games, players and culture that matter to you, with videos, livestreams and the biggest community of gamers on the web, all in one place“.
On the part of livestream, they are targeting Twitch, a livestream gaming service that has 1.5 million broadcasters and an impressive 100 million visitors per month. Google & Amazon were engaged in a bidding war to buy the gaming platform & Amazon won and ended up forking $970 million for Twitch. Integrating Twitch and YouTube would have made sense because it would have made YouTube the “one stop shop” for gamers & gaming content creators to watch and livestream games. YouTube probably saw how popular channels that offer tutorials on how to play games are, like PewDiePie who has a massive 38.8 million subscribers & has racked in an insane 9.8 billion views on his channel.
Now on YouTube Gaming, you will be able to view more than 25,000 games, where each will have their own page on the platform and in addition for each specific title, you will see its best livestreams or videos. There are channels too, where you can subscribe & you will be notified when they start a livestream. As usual with YouTube, its algorithms, they will generate recommendations of other games & channels you may like.
Gamers will surely like this new service by YouTube but it will take time to see if they will ditch Twitch for YouTube Gaming. Also, we’ll have to see top channels for gaming content on YouTube like PewDiePie, or the actual companies that develop these games like EA, Ubisoft, Activision and the likes opening channels where they can give tips or give a livestream versions of their games. There is a lot of potential for the platform & it will be interesting to see how it will be adopted by gamers & content creators over the years.
