YouTube Gaming: Google's Answer To Amazon-Acquired Twitch

You’ll know just how obsessed gamers are about their games when not one, but two whole tech giants are competing for gamers’ attention—with gaming live streaming.

YouTube is gearing to create a new platform to rival Twitch, the live streaming platform that Amazon owns.

Twitch, launched back in 2011 and has secured a spot in the hearts of the walkthrough-seeking gaming public. While most still turn to YouTube for their fix of walkthroughs and cheats, live streaming for games is apparently a thing, as Twitch matured enough by 2013, averaging 43 million viewers monthly. In 2014, it earned the #4 spot on the US’ top sources of internet traffic during peak hours. And in 2015, Twitch became home to 1.5 million broadcasters, with 100 million visitors monthly.

So Google, via YouTube, is attempting to hack into Twitch’s corner of the live stream-addicted gaming market.

Google tried to buy Twitch in 2014, but it lost to Amazon. Apparently, Jeff Bezos thought that the company was worth the $970 million—almost a whole billion dollars—thrown Twitch’s way. And since Google failed in its acquisition attempt, and since it owns THE platform where hosted walkthroughs are rife anyway, apparently, it decided to just add a new layer to YouTube.

Gaming.Youtube.com isn’t just going to be a subset of YouTube. It will have apps that will let a gamer broadcast his gameplay, live, and possibly create his own following. Since a good number of YouTube videos are dedicated to gaming anyway, why not all those walkthroughs and cheats in one central.

Fans of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Defense of the Ancients, Five Nights At Freddy’s, Life Is Strange, Super Mario Maker, Plants vs. Zombies, Fallout Shelter, and other games will get to see their favorite fellow gamers show their best moves, live, even right now. When the platform officially rolls out, Google will just add more profit channels to its existing streams.

Even though Google lost out to Amazon in buying Twitch, with this new development, they’ll still saunter to the bank, laughing the whole way.