Google was rumoured to be close to a $1 billion acquisition of Twitch, before Amazon swooped in and beat them to it, so Google is not set to launch its own game streaming platform – YouTube Gaming.
“YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favourite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else,” said product manager Alan Joyce on the YouTube blog. “From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.”
Users will be able to add a game to their ‘collection’ and the latest videos related to those games will show up there. Subscribe to a channel and you’ll get a notification the moment it begins a live stream.
While gaming is already popular on YouTube, YouTube Gaming will be centered around live streams, much like Twitch. This includes features like 60fps streaming, DVR, automatically converting live streams into YouTube videos, and launching live streams without having to schedule them.
If you’re eager to get streaming on YouTube Gaming, however, there’s some bad news. The service will launch in a few weeks only in the US and UK, so everyone else will have to wait.
This year, YouTube will host its first ever E3 show – Live at E3, hosted by Geoff Keighley, and will also have a booth on the show floor.
Click here to sign up for YouTube Gaming launch notifications.