YouTube’s big push to gaming released on Wednesday, Aug 26, as a standalone website and will also be available via apps on Android and iOS, NDTV Gadgets reports.
It first announced in June, and now YouTube Gaming will compete against Amazon-owned Twitch, which has around 2 million concurrent viewers.
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The launch of YouTube Gaming came months after Google reportedly failed to acquire Twitch due to potential antitrust concerns.
Gaming videos are a big pull for YouTube. the company says visitors spent billions of hours watching them every month. YouTube’s super star Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, is a gamer too.
“We wanted to create a one-stop shop for all gaming content, ” YouTube’s head of gaming Ryan Wyatt told the BBC.
“At the moment there is a fragmented experience. People go to different places for live content, and YouTube for video on demand.
“We have amazing gamers that don’t live stream yet. Now they have that opportunity.”
NDTV reports that YouTube Gaming service will offer gamers more than 25, 000 game-specific pages to let them quickly find game-related videos and other content.
The service will also curate live-streams from thousands of gaming-related channels.
YouTube Gaming service also wants to make it easier for people to live-stream games on YouTube.
The company has launched a new page called Stream, currently in beta, which gives users the option to start streaming at a personal URL.
“YouTube gaming brings you closer to the games, gamers, and culture that matter to you, ” said Frank Petterson, YouTube engineering manager. “Together, we all make gaming better. Our peers make us better gamers, and games are made better by the communities that surround them.”
The new YouTube Gaming service will be launched on Web on YouTube’s new Gaming website and will be available in all countries where YouTube is available. The Android and iOS clients, on the other hand, will be released in the UK and USA on Wednesday, with other countries getting the support soon, NDTV says.
