YouTube announced on Friday that it will launch YouTube Gaming this summer. This is a whole new app and website for gaming, which appears to be a competitor to Twitch, which Google previously tried to buy, but is now owned by Amazon.
Amazon completed its acquisition of Twitch last September, buying it for $970 million. Google had been in talks to acquire it prior to that, but reportedly backed out due to antitrust concerns.
Back in March, we heard that YouTube was gearing up to go after Twitch with a new game streaming focus, and now this has been officially realized.
Google says YouTube gaming will serve as a place to keep “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.”
It will have content on over 25,000 games, and each will have its own page for videos and live streams. There will also be channels for game publishers and YouTube creators.
“Keeping up with these games and channels is now super easy, too,” says product manager Alan Joyce. “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,” Joyce adds. “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 like high 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 sometimes this summer in the US and UK. They’ll be showing it off at E3 next week.
It’s been a big week for tech giants and their gaming efforts between this and the unveiling of Facebook’s Oculus Rift.
Image via Google