YouTube’s already got a lot of gaming content on it, including speed runs, Let’s Plays, and more, but this summer the video streaming service is going to kick its gaming offerings up a notch.
YouTube Gaming will launch this summer with the goal of offering gaming content like livestreams, speed runs, Let’s Plays, and more in one place. You’ll be able to subscribe to channels and get alerts of livestreams when they begin, just like with popular gaming service Twitch, and YouTube Gaming will also recommend new channels that it thinks you might be interested in. YouTube Gaming will also offer dedicated pages for more than 25,000 games so that you can follow all content related to a particular game that you may be really into.
YouTube Gaming is placing a heavy focus on livestreaming and attracting those users to its service. YouTube Gaming will offer 60fps streaming, DVR features, support for sharing links to your streams, and a refresh of its broadcasting system that won’t require you to schedule your stream ahead of time. And when you’re done livestreaming, YouTube Gaming will automatically convert your content into a YouTube video.
YouTube Gaming will launch this summer in the US and UK. The service will be available on the web and mobile, including apps for both Android and iOS.
Video game content has grown quite a bit in recent years, and Amazon showed as much when it dropped nearly $1 billion on Twitch last year. Google was reportedly interested in buying Twitch as well, but luckily for Google, it’s already got a robust video service in YouTube. The thing is that Twitch is already well-established with gamers as a go-to service for livestreaming, and so while YouTube is well-known in its own right, it’s going to have to convince streamers to check out YouTube Gaming even though they may already have an established Twitch presence.
What do you think of YouTube Gaming? Do you think it’ll be able to compete with Twitch?
