YouTube is set to release its Twitch game-streaming competitor ‘YouTube Gaming’ tomorrow, and it’s coming to Australia (kind of). Many tech industry pundits expected YouTube to purchase the popular game streaming service Twitch, but due to apparent anti-trust concerns, YouTube withdrew from any potential purchase allowing Amazon to buy the company.
Shortly after, YouTube announced they were launching their own game streaming service. Jump forward several months, and Google is now ready to take their game streaming service out of beta and launch it publicly. Interested users will be able to access the service via any browser at gaming.youtube.com, or via dedicated iOS, Android phone and tablet specific apps from tomorrow. Access to the new gaming site will be open to “any country where YouTube is currently available”, however the app will only be officially available in the USA and the UK for now. At launch, the service will only be provided in English.
In conjunction with the new streaming service, YouTube is also launching new tools to assist with scheduling and watching live streams. The streaming dashboard will enable creators to buffer the last 4 hours of a stream to allow viewers to jump into a stream after it starts and watch from any point in the past 4 hours of that broadcast.
As a late entrant into the game streaming space, YouTube is facing some fierce competition from the incumbent Twitch. However, with YouTube already being a go-to place for gaming videos for some users, and with the overall popularity of YouTube as a whole, it looks like Google is positioned to have another success on their hands.
Not everything has to be a fight to the death, and with the increasing popularity of game streaming and game watching as a whole the market should be large enough to support both options. This in turn should drive competition and innovation which will be good for everyone in the long run.
UPDATE:
For those who don’t like to wait and like to live on the wild side of app installation the guys over at APK Mirror have grabbed the APK file and put it up. If you know what that means you know what to do. We have installed the app and its working right now for us on our Australian accounts, so if you’re interested, have at it.
Are you looking forward to Google’s take on a game streaming service? Let us know in the comments.
