Google Announces YouTube Gaming Service

Remember last summer when everyone was speculating that Google was looking to buy live streaming giant Twitch so that it could be integrated into their YouTube service, but then Amazon bought Twitch instead?

Well, today, YouTube announced their own live streaming app and website, "YouTube Gaming," that will serve as a hub for live streams, archived videos, and community interaction. YouTube Gaming will launch "later this summer," and will be at E3 showing off the platform to attendees.

The service will be organized around over 25,000 unique "game pages," each dedicated to a specific title. Users will be able to add games of interest to their "collection" in order to receive notifications whenever new content related to that game is available. Users will also be able to follow the channels of individual YouTube creators and some game companies. (Hey Jeff, just go ahead and follow Arc System now.)

The announcement emphasized a commitment to improving YouTube's live streaming experience:

On top of existing features like high frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time. We’re also creating single link you can share for all your streams.

Some of this–the 60fps streams and DVR–is fantastic. The rest is... well... Honestly, it's sort of the bare minimum support necessary for a cohesive live streaming service, so it's good that the company is getting that into place. Hopefully once the foundation is locked down, YouTube Gaming will be able to introduce new features specifically built for broadcasting and archiving game video.

Twitch "welcomed" their new competitor to the field with a social media punch in the arm...

...but I suspect (and hope) that this playful rivalry will exist alongside strong competition that forces both companies to improve the services they're offering consumers. Last year, I interviewed a few folks at Twitch and it seemed like the company had a number of hurdles they needed to clear in order to expand and improve their services, and a strong alternative could help push them to take the necessary leaps. (This interview was before the Amazon acquisition, of course, so it's likely that the larger scale of the retail behemoth offered them some solutions.)

Twitch has had other competitors over the years, like Ustream and Hitbox, but none have really given Twitch a run for its money. YouTube has a few things those other services didn't though: A built in user base, established stars, and a huge backlog of content. Time will tell if that's enough for YouTube Gaming to take on Twitch and become a new destination for live streaming.

Well this is interesting. It's like a social engineering experiment: how could you possibly create a worse user community experience than Twitch for livestreamed games? Get the people from Youtube comments!

lmao yup, youtube chat is consistently a fucking nightmare. that response from Twitch is pretty fucking good though.

I don't understand why people want to watch random (mostly) teenagers play video games on the internet.

But I'm old.

Hmm. Interesting. Hopefully it will have decent viewing options for those with slower internet connections. Mine connection is pretty shoddy, which meant watching any Twitch stream without video quality options was pretty much impossible.

It will indeed be interesting to see if there are noticeable differences between the language, jokes and ascii art between the two!

@poser: Probably the same reason we like to watch middle-aged men play video games on the internet.

I am old and I sometimes watch random (mostly) teenagers play video games on the internet.

But I also need a hobby.

Depending on what streams on twitch you've been watching. Kaceytron's chat is an actual waking nightmare.

@poser: they aren't random. You don't spin a wheel and then watch whomever you landed on.

That tweet was a real dick move on Twitch's part. I honestly thought they were classier than that.

I'm pretty into that Twitch tweet, if nothing else they know their audience.

I go where the streamers go. So whatever.

I love that tweet by Twitch. Well done.

What I can't stop thinking about is how bad Twitch chat can be and then imagining how bad chat would/could get on YouTube streams.

@obsideondarman: I didn't get any malice from it, more just a welcome to a competitor. They do actually have a Google+ page :)

That said, I still have no idea what 'kappa' is, so if that changes the context entirely then I plead ignorance :\

#<>

For all it's money, Twitch has very few community terms of service and filtering. It's kind of a sad statement that it's up to the actual channel owners to outlaw harassment, epithets, etc on their channels; and it was up to the community to create the bots that handle most of the spam and crap that comes flowing through the channels.

I just don't believe that it's a matter of resources, because this isn't as expensive as transcoding videos for partners. Set up a global filter list of certain hateful speech and crack down on assholes. What they have presently is the softest handed moderation this side of Reddit.

It will be good to see some strong competition in this field.
Not expecting too much right now though. YouTube has pretty much gotten worse every update for years now.

G-G-G-GAME CHANGER.

.

.

.

I'll be here all week folks.

as long as it is better quality and more consistent than twitch than i am all for it

Twitches reply is perfect btw. 10/10

And yes it's great to get some proper competition now, hopefully it will push Twitch to step up their game.

An alternative without those stupid face emoticons? I'm on board. The dark interface is the clincher.

@poser said:

And your stream will be shut down for copyrighted content...

Twitch and Youtube will both die for live streaming stuff, something else will be more popular.

Hopefully torrent P2P streaming.

But can I stream Hatred on it?

YouTube will actually have good archives probably, that's my least favorite thing about twitch...it's terrible. Wanna watch something really cool that happened on twitch 2 days ago? Watch this 5 hour archive and struggle to scrub through it. A YouTube player scrubs like butter.

@hobozero: Kappa is a twitch emote which indicates that the person is using sarcasm.

You know I didn't think we could see anything worse than Twitch Chat, I think we are about to experience that worse thing, Live Youtube comments.

Twitch chat is basically that.

That is a vision of hell that I DO NOT WANT.

I see this sentiment a lot, but all the streams I regularly visit have pretty great chats. Sure, there are assholes that show up every once in a while, but they get banned pretty quick. I guess all the people talking about terrible twitch chats are going to streams with 10k+ viewers? I personally have pretty good experiences on a regular basis in twitch chat for the streams I watch.

If you thought Twitch chat was a useless stream of Kappas and "dank memes", this will make it look like coherent conversations.

Loving that tweet. haha

I'm so happy we have a news guy again :) Also, if the archives of live streams are available right away in good quality, I'm in. I'm so done with twitch's archived streams system.

Twitch needs serious competition, so this is a good thing. The YT live player is already much better than Twitch's player, so I hope this can force Twitch to actually seriously update their player. Same goes for Twitch's VODs, which are the worst in the business.

Oh yes!! Immediate Youtube archives! Can only push Twitch to get in the game and update their player! Also may push them to finally improve their mobile app features!

I would imagine that another card in YouTube's sleeve is their existing relationship with many advertisers.

Just more videos to flag for copyright. The copyright trolls are probably salivating over the idea of getting to keep their horrible jobs for a little longer.

How about that HitBox though? That site is pretty much better than Twitch already...

Youtube game streaming would mean the option to stream without Twitch user commentary, making it a very good thing that I likely will partake in. If you think youtube-comments on youtube livestreams can be worse you have not seen enough twitch-comments.

Hitbox is a real chill next to zero delay (eat it Twitch) alternative too, amazingly stable and reliable in comparison and everywhere, still a lovely community there compared to Twitch. Not to mention how much better it is as a freaking site.

Nicovideo is still number one in website-matters though.

You know, the community over on you-tube gets a bad rap, and if you stick to the major channels (Gamespot seems to have this issue at least) the quality of discussion is, more or less, non-existant..

..and yet i have had dozens of meaningful, well thought out conversations with people via YouTube's comment system. I've chosen my words carefully to be sure, but its surprising how well genuine non-aggressive/demeaning/trollish behavior will get you, at least within certain channel's communities.

Even posts which start out as one of the above, when addressed as legitimate and given a actual discussion back have always resulted in "Oh hey lets talk about it" instead of "stfu fool!" or etc.

Maybe I've just been lucky.

Well I block the chat on all my Twitch and GB streams if there is a means to do this in YouTube Gaming may as well do that too.

@saladshooter4ever: well said

I hope it succeeds and spawns some new communities. I like the idea of game streaming, but the Twitch community brings everything it comes in contact with down to about a 5th grade reading level.

I feel that YouTube might win this one, since many streamers still make use of YouTube when creating content. It's just too convenient, if the service has the same quality of Twitch.

I do love the Twitch community and it would be a shame to lose (even part of) it.

Time will tell.

You know what? Twitch has done a few things I don't like over the years, but YouTube has done quite a lot more...

I think I'll stand somewhere in the middle and see who has shorter stream delay. That's what is important to me.

There is absolutely a global filter for language on twitch chat. It is on by default and each channel can decide whether to turn it off for their own chat.

No, that kind of stuff was on Playroom.

Ba-dum-ts!

Will the stream delay be less than 45 seconds? That is really the only complaint I have with Twitch, and it seems to be getting progressively worse. If they can cut that down then I'll be pulling for it to succeed.

Any competition for Twitch is probably a good thing. Between the nearly minute long delay and quality problems Twitch could use a bigger kick in the pants than Hitbox. They've been resting on their laurels a bit too much.

We'll have to see how the content ID side of things shake out, but more options is a positive.