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YouTube will no longer maintain a separate application targeting games and streaming live games, the company announced today. The YouTube Gaming app, which arrived for the first time in 2015, will be launched next spring while its many features will be broadcast on the main YouTube site.
Over the years, the YouTube Gaming app has been a place where YouTube has experimented with features for game creators and viewers who enjoy watching live and recorded spies. Here, he tested elements such as game pages to make games easier to discover, Super Chat and Channel Memberships – features that the Amazon Twitch-owned games streaming site had also popularized in the gaming community.
Some of the features of YouTube Gaming have been so well received that the company has brought them to YouTube. For example, last June, YouTube introduced channel membership on its main site. And before that, she had brought Super Chat – a way for creators to make money from live streams – to her extended community as well.
But while gambling remains one of the main areas of YouTube, no one really uses the standalone YouTube app, says the company.
"We have 200 million connected people watching game content every day," says Ryan Wyatt, director of YouTube game content and partnerships at TechCrunch. "And the majority of them, frankly, do not just use the YouTube Gaming app for their gaming experiences," he says.
However, Sensor Tower data shows that the app has recorded more than 11 million installations on iOS and Android, and that these installations have remained constant over time. This indicates that a large number of people were at least willing to try the application. But the company also found that its daily users were a "tiny fraction" of Twitch on iOS, which confirms Wyatt's view of the lack of use.
Instead, players connect to YouTube to watch the games, says Wyatt.
They're also watching a lot of games – over the past twelve months, fans have broadcast more than 50 billion hours of game content, and YouTube has more than 500,000 quarterly live streaming game streamers.
In other words, YouTube's decision to remove the standalone application should not be seen as an admission that it is giving Twitch space, but rather that she now decides to use the power of the flagship application YouTube to better compete.
On this front, the company today launches a new YouTube Gaming destination on youtube.com/gaming. The destination is first available in the United States and will be rolled out globally in the coming months.
A link to the new vertical will appear in the left navigation bar, where you will find other top-level sections such as Trending and Subscriptions.
The Gaming destination will offer personalized content at the top of the page, based on what you love to watch, as well as the best live games, the latest gaming videos from your subscriptions, and shelves dedicated to live streams and trend videos. .
Another feature, "Game Creator on the Rise," will highlight emerging game creators who are still trying to create an audience. This is something that, according to many, is still a problem for Twitch, owned by Amazon. They quickly find that they need the blessing of an existing influencer to get more viewers on their channel.
Wyatt also points out that YouTube Gaming will not be all about live streams.
"The other thing we learned through this process was that the game application and the story surrounding it were very life-oriented. Everyone has always talked about live streaming and live gaming, "he says. "But what it did was serve the vast game
Business. So, by uploading it to YouTube, you've got that nice combination of live gaming streams that continue to massively grow on YouTube, as well as all the other VOD content on the platform.
The new YouTube game destination, however, lacks several elements. In particular, the ability to broadcast gameplay directly from your phone.
That's why the YouTube Gaming app does not disappear immediately. Instead, it will remain in place until March or perhaps even in April 2019, while YouTube is striving to transfer the experience to its main site and its application.
"We're still working on that," admits Wyatt, when asked how the live streaming component will be delivered to YouTube properly. "We have not made a decision on whether [live game streaming] will be here by March, but we need a solution for easy mobile capture from the phone, "he says.
The YouTube Gaming app was never a global release because it was only present in certain markets, note it. YouTube's vertical on games will eventually be launched around the world. This could be a challenge for Twitch, as it leverages the eyes of 1.8 billion YouTube users, while expanding to take advantage of new YouTube features such as firsts or derivatives.
"It's a great opportunity to use these features," notes Wyatt, referring to YouTube Gaming's move to YouTube itself. "And we're going to continue to create more features that really lend themselves to life, but eventually we'll think of some really unique ways to apply them to VOD," he says.
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