YouTube Gaming is Twitch’s main competitor. YouTube was already a big player, but Google doesn’t want it to become old and stale. The big G, starting with the 26th of August, has begun promoting YouTube Gaming as a separate dedicated website and app aimed at, go figure, gaming.
Users who want Call of Duty search results won’t have to go through Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.
Yet, this wasn’t the main problem.
Esports popularity has grown tremendously over the past five years and Twitch was the main hub for it. Google can’t let this happen. If they succeed in their endeavor, if the company manages to separate different gaming content, they can rest assured that people will use it.
If you build it, they will come.
Lui Calibre, whose site has 3.5 million subscribers, holds a cookie in the shape of the YouTube Gaming App’s heart logo. Photo: Susan Karlin.
YouTube Gaming resembles Netflix when it comes to watching a stream. It stays true to it roots, but you won’t notice the vanilla components that made the video service popular. Comments can be seen on the side, you can give a streamer either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down and you can subscribe to their channel.
It’s really not that hard to use, and I’m inclined to think that the main YouTube page would benefit from looking like this.
The biggest difference lies in its essence. It’s gaming-oriented. There’s a list where you can see what games are trending, there are featured channels, and there are even landing pages for certain games.
Results are divided into categories like live shows, popular videos and pre-recorded Let’s Play vids.
The Android app looks a lot like Twitch’s, but its desktop counterpart is more fine-detailed. It looks sleeker, better organized and easier to use.
But this isn’t how you poach users from Twitch. Better features and great content creators will, however. The benefit of rewinding a stream in case you’ve missed its beginning is definitely a start.
Currently, Twitch’s most viewed channel racks-up approximately 32,000 viewers. YouTube’s most popular channel has around 11,000 – these may be users who are just trying out the service. Also, because YouTube features channels on its front page.
People don’t think of YouTube as a live streaming hub, but they’re starting to.
Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie
Let’s take PewDiePie. He’s a huge part of YouTube and YouTube Gaming. He creates content especially for the video service. Because he uses Google’s video platform as his second home, he keeps people coming back.
If Felix Kjellberg decides to leave for Twitch, the majority of his fan-base will leave along with him. I’m curious to see if dividing YouTube in two will be worthwhile for Google, or if it’s a big mistake.
What do you think? Is Google making a mistake? Will Twitch reign supreme? Tell us in the comments section down below.
Michael Turner
