A year ago, Google was rumoured to be looking at streaming video game company Twitch, before Amazon finally purchased the company last August, at which point the rumours of a YouTube Gaming channel began to grow. This morning, Google has officially launched the service, now known as YouTube Gaming.
Featuring access to videos of over 25-Thousand games, YouTube Gaming is entering the streaming game video market with gusto. YouTube Gaming will let you subscribe to a game, which then lets you view all the game videos attributed to that game, or you can subscribe to a particular players channel, with notifications sent to you when they start a game.
Search will also be honed to focus on gaming, which Google says ‘when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe”.
The YouTube Gaming service will make use of recent YouTube updates such as 60FPS streaming, as well as existing services such as DVR and converting videos to YouTube. YouTube Gaming will also take advantage of the mobile reach of YouTube and Google is already looking to the future, talking about changing the system so that streams won’t need to be scheduled ahead of time.
The announcement today hasn’t gone un-noticed either, with Twitch, publicly at least, welcoming the move:
. @YouTubeGaming Welcome Player 2. Add me on Google+. #kappa
— Twitch (@Twitch) June 12, 2015
YouTube Gaming is launching in the U.S. and U.K first, starting ‘this summer’ but will roll out to other countries, however Google hasn’t announced any timeline on that. Google will show off the service at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles later this month, interested users will be able to check out all the action at youtube.com/e3 and you can head over to gaming.youtube.com or follow @YouTubeGaming on Twitter and you’ll be notified when YouTube Gaming is ready to play with.
Awesome.
Twitch cannot die quickly enough. Terrible platform.