As if Facebook making games for its Messenger service wasn’t enough in recent gaming news, YouTube has recently confirmed rumors that it will be releasing a gaming service. They’re calling it YouTube Gaming, and it will be both an app and a website purely dedicated to on-demand video games and live stream channels. YouTube will be joining an existing player in the field, Twitch, which is a well-established live gameplay streaming-only website with a strong following.
YouTube Gaming app is 100% separate from rest of YouTube.
YouTube gaming is slated to have over 25,000 games, each with its own page. There will be hundreds of channels from a large number of game companies and YouTube video creators. Each page will contain all of the best live streams and videos related to that game.
New app is to have highly sought features tailored to gamers.
The YouTube Gaming app will feature 60 frame-per-second live streaming of channels. Gamers and fans of competitive gaming will be able to subscribe to channels and receive notifications of live streams when they’re about to start, as well as recommendations for other channels based on their choices. The search features on the app are said to be excellent, which is something one would expect when considering that Google, at the end of the day, owns YouTube and will own YouTube Gaming. The app will also feature a DVR-like feature, which will let users rewind live streams, and better chat moderation. Another new feature is a low latency streaming option, which is supposed to let viewers interact with streamers in entirely new ways.
YouTube Gaming is part of an effort to correct a YouTube failure.
According to YouTube’s Ryan Wyatt, global head of gaming partnerships, YouTube “never really built gamers the experience they deserve,” with respect to live-streamed video. He tells us that the app was developed from scratch “for gamers by gamers,” and that now gaming videos won’t be blended in with a bunch of other random content anymore, necessitating lengthy searches. YouTube has stated that it will be launching YouTube Gaming in the United States and the United Kingdom sometime this summer.
