YouTube, Twitch.tv vie for gamers
Google launches e-sports site as watching people play becomes a huge business
In a move to compete with Twitch.tv, the leading video-game streaming platform, Google launched YouTube Gaming Wednesday, a new site that features people live streaming the games they play, instructional walkthroughs and much more.
The site has been in the works for almost a year and YouTube clearly wants to capitalize on the explosive growth in video-game watching as a spectator sport. Much of that growth has been fuelled by competitive video gaming, known as e-sports, which are already huge in Asia and growing in North America.
A recent report from Newzoo, a gaming market research company, estimated that revenue from esports will grow to $465 million (U.S.) in 2017. Earlier this year, Pewdiepie, one of the world’s most popular game streamers in the world, reportedly made almost $8 million from his video views on YouTube.
There is big money in people watching video games and although there were already many popular “Let’s Play” videos on the site, You- Tube decided to break it out into its own dedicated vertical. According to a Google spokesperson, YouTube Gaming will feature more than 25,000 games. The online video site has seen people spending 75 per cent more time watching gaming videos this year compared with last year.
More than half of YouTube’s gaming views are on mobile devices and, as such, YouTube Gaming has launched an official app in the U.S. and U.K. It is not known when that app might be available in Canada, but the website is available.
YouTube Gaming is squarely aimed at Twitch.tv, a video game livestreaming site that was bought in August last year by Amazon for $970 million. Google was reportedly also interested in purchasing that site, but Amazon beat them out.
YouTube is still one of the leaders in streaming music online and its game viewing was also already popular, with online video analytics firm OpenSlate reporting that the10 most popular games channels on the original YouTube generated more than 2.2 billion monthly video views.
Twitch and YouTube were already in competition but by creating YouTube Gaming, with more dedicated tools for streamers and gamers, the video giant likely wanted to find ways to entice users to stay.