YouTube Gaming Seeks To Steal Spotlight From Twitch, Starting Today

With eSports getting bigger and bigger, streaming services that let users share their gameplay live are becoming more and more popular. Twitch.tv has enjoyed massive success in this space, and Raptr's Plays.tv popped up earlier this year. YouTube said that gaming-related content views are up 75 percent over last year, and half of the top 100 channels are dedicated to gaming. The company has finally launched its own game streaming service, YouTube Gaming, which is meant to take a share of that live game streaming market.

YouTube first announced YouTube Gaming in early June, and over the last month, the company has been trialing the service with a few thousand select game streamers and gaming-related content creators. As of today, YouTube Gaming is available through a web browser for anywhere YouTube is currently available. Apps for both Android and iOS have been released in the U.S. and UK, with other countries getting access at a later date.

YouTube Gaming isn't dedicated solely to game streaming. YouTube said the service will curate all gaming-related content on YouTube and make it easily available on YouTube Gaming. This will be comprised of live streams, as well as pre-recorded features already found on YouTube. The company said there are currently over 25,000 gaming related pages and channels on YouTube, and YouTube Gaming will suggest channels based on the games and channels you follow.

YouTube has improved its streaming capabilities to get YouTube Gaming off the ground. The service is capable of delivering 60fps streaming using HTML5 for playback. The company has also integrated a DVR-like quality, allowing fans to pause and rewind streams, as well as fast forward to catch up to the live broadcast.

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 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

  • dstarr3
    This initially makes me sad, because I like Twitch, but... Do I like Twitch because of Twitch itself, or do I like Twitch because of the streamers I watch on Twitch, who would inevitably switch to YouTube once the winds change?
    Reply
  • jaber2
    You like twitch because its better, where on youtube can you have streams of viewers chatting about molly
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    I dont see many major streamers, or tournament broadcasts switching over. Twitch works for them, CSGO had nearly one million viewers during the ESL One Cologne finals last week on twitch, why bother moving to youtube?
    Reply
  • James Mason
    I dont see many major streamers, or tournament broadcasts switching over. Twitch works for them, CSGO had nearly one million viewers during the ESL One Cologne finals last week on twitch, why bother moving to youtube?
    Interestingly, you can stream to multiple sites without terribly that much extra processing power.
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    In that case, this could be good for larger names on twitch, stream to both and (theoretically) reach double the audience.
    Reply
  • ammaross
    Youtube Streaming is going to need extra featuresets (third-party or otherwise), such as a Nightbot-alike chat mod, TwitchAlerts-style notifications and donation announcers, etc, before it will rise to compete with Twitch.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    16527814 said:
    In that case, this could be good for larger names on twitch, stream to both and (theoretically) reach double the audience.

    Which is pretty much what will happen.

    It is much like say Rooster Teeth who tries to use their website more, because they get more money, but they use YouTube and have been making a Twitch Stream team.

    People will follow the money.
    Reply
  • uglyduckling81
    Finally be able to watch some live streams without constant buffering. Twitch is useless in Australia
    Reply
  • WhyFi
    Elsewhere in the WWW, many are concerned about YouTube's Content ID, which can yank down a live stream if it thinks that there's some IP infringement going on. If it happens enough to even be a little annoying, the endeavor is going to flop.
    Reply
  • joshyboy82
    I had already read this subject on various news sources via Flipboard, but I came here thinking that Tom's was going to "tech" the hell out of it. I just wanted to know what the bandwidth cap was for Youtube. I'm am punished by Twitch's 3.5mbps, and I have the capacity to use 12. I'd like to migrate from using CPU encoding to the Nvidia codec, but the quality is too low at the cap.

    Also, side note. Google owns Youtube. I should be able to use my PLAY purchased music in my streams. It would encourage others to buy from the PLAY store.
    Reply