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YouTube Gaming – Google’s answer to Twitch – launches tomorrow
YouTube may be the reigning champion when it comes to recorded web video, but it still trails a sizeable distance behind Twitch when it comes to live streaming video game content. That may be about to change however with tomorrow’s launch of YouTube Gaming, a web and mobile platform dedicated to a wide variety of game content.
“Today, the gaming world is much more diverse than the one I grew up with, and the community has created new formats that have made gaming more collaborative and interactive,” YouTube product manager Alan Joyce wrote when the new gaming platform was announced in July. “On YouTube, gaming has spawned entirely new genres of videos, from let’s plays, walkthroughs, and speedruns to cooking and music videos. Now, it’s our turn to return the favor with something built just for gamers.”
Joyce described YouTube Gaming at the time as “a brand new app and website to keep you 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.”
While Google may look like it hopes YouTube Gaming is going to take a slice of Twitch’s pie, the platform is not exclusively for live streaming content, although that seems to be an important part of it. Recently YouTube has worked at improving the fidelity of its streaming platform, which is now capable of supporting live video at 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution, putting it on par with Twitch.
YouTube’s live streaming platform does surpass Twitch in one key area: viewers can rewind live broadcasts to catch up on what they missed, similar to the way a DVR works with live television. This may seem like a minor convenience when it comes to your average Let’s Player, but the rewind feature is one way YouTube could actually put the pressure on Twitch when it comes to the site’s bread and butter: eSports.
In eSports terms, missing the first few minutes of a League of Legends or Dota 2 tournament could be like missing the first quarter of the Super Bowl, and late comers might just choose to head over to YouTube Gaming instead of Twitch if they know they can catch up on what they missed.
Screenshot via YouTube Gaming
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