I think this will be a successful for the following reasons:
Previous Twitch competitor (Owned3D) was successful in gaining viewership by poaching streamers from twitch with better deals.It seems like it was pretty easy for personalities to transfer their fan bases over. Many twitch streamers already post highlights of their streams to youtube so they've already established a presence there. I would also think that youtube will be better at serving video advertisements and handling copyrighted materials on stream (currently twitch handles copyrighted music by muting archived videos that contain it, whereas youtube places an advertisement for the song at the bottom of the video).
YouTube shuts down videos with footage Nintendo games in it automatically. They have an awful reputation for one sided copyright enforcement amongst game streamers.
What YouTube does with copyrighted music depends on what the rights holder tells them to do. Most of the time in Germany the video is just unviewable. I'd rather prefer muted instead of unable to watch.
Own34 was first it actually was Justin.tv/Twitch.tv poaching streamers from Own3d. Own3d had a money problem with not enough income and more money going out due to popularity. Streamers were owed tens of thousands of dollars when they closed up shop.
Agreed, Its a brilliant move by YouTube, I am surprised they didn't bring this earlier. People were already using YouTube to show their game footage for a long long time.
I don't understand why Google can not roll this out internationally from the start. Why only US and UK?
The content is not subject to old copyright contracts, which is typically the argument not to launch something in Europe and its crazy copyright situation. And twitch is available everywhere.
If Google wants this to become a success, shouldn't they roll this out to as many people as possible and hope for network effects?
I don't understand either. It seem like Google thinks people only speak the language from where they connect.
Ex: Youtube keeps suggesting me German videos even if all my accept-language headers and settings are set to en-US.(I'm in Switzerland, speak French). Also, you only see populars videos from your country. Wich makes no sense when the total population is less than Paris.
Seems like Google started segregating content by location and country language, it's sad and arbitrary.
Youtube's goal would be to get people over to their gaming product instead of heading over to twitch. Plans for monetization come later. That should not be a concern considering twitch does not stream properly for many users. My friends on Steam share the same opinion (At least the ones in Asia).
Streaming any game in real time and getting enough folks to watch it is still a problem that needs a solution with more polish. Twitch does not keep up and `Steam streaming` does not work half the time. I'd stream games on gaming.youtube.com if they did a better job at it and have a product focused around that.
I can foresee a future where youtube can get those eyeballs on `gaming.youtube.com` instead of twitch.tv. Youtube is already popular for gaming reviews.
Streaming a game in real time with low bandwidth requirement is a problem we've had a solution to since the dawn of multiplayer games but that seems to have been forgotten in modern games: Spectator mode.
You use your game client to connect to the same server that the actual game is playing on, only receive the small packets of player information and then render it locally.
This will of course eventually also overload the server with enough spectators but some kind of forwarding proxy should be able to solve this easily.
Voice commentary and a professional host choosing the best camera angle is still missing but this is also something that could be embedded into the game if the game developers really wanted to.
It took long enough for Google to cater to gamers. After Twitch was acquired for a large sum of money, it was only a matter of time before Google decided to go after gamers. Most gamers have Youtube presences anyway, if Google can take all of the great features and things gamers like about Twitch and then add some additional features on-top, it'll be a success for them no doubt.
Curious why they're launching in the US and UK first though. Couldn't find anything that explained why the delayed release, surely it's not because of copyright reasons.
Twitch has already won over most of the potential audience for computer game streaming. Computer gamers tend to be a loyal bunch, and they know that Twitch is a site by and for gamers. If I had to guess, YouTube Gaming will have trouble making headway.
The problem is Twitch infrastrucutre is not good enough to stream properly in many countries. A 1080p/60fps stream has only about a 6Mbit bitrate but in Australia will not work, even on a connection ten times as fast. Plus, without a special agreeement that only top streamers have, Twitch takes 50% of subscription money - I'm sure Google can afford smaller margins to lure streamers over.
The problem they will face is not that gamers are loyal so much as for many people "live video game broadcast" is Twitch, so people are unlikely to notice live streams if they're elsewhere. This is solvable though - most streamers upload their VODs to YouTube anyway so they can easily notify users when a streamer is live.
At least in terms of the esports streaming component people will go to wherever the big events are happening.
Fro a Dota perspective competition like MLG, Hitbox, DailyMotion and Azubu have gone down the path of getting exclusive events and a lot of the audience generally follows.
There is also the massive Chinese market which is generally siloed from the rest of the world.
One thing other sites struggle with is getting the same Chat experience that a lot of people like from Twitch for big events.
People aren't going to stop watching their favorite personalities just because they switch to YouTube. The only thing YouTube has to do is convince some big names that they can make more money on their site. And that should be easy to do, if it is in fact true. A couple of small streamers are surely going to try it, and if they report good results, more and more people will switch.
Twitch's priorities aren't exactly spectacular, considering how they switched streaming backends in a way that moved them from 5-8 second latency to 30ish second latency (or more, sometimes stretching to minutes). They've improved it over time but that transition was pretty awful for any channel that interacts directly with chat.
I think one way Twitch could lose me is if YouTube figures out discovery. I cut the cord and as odd as this sounds I will plop down on the couch with dinner and check out what's on Twitch. The UIs I see are focused on popular games as opposed to what might be most interesting (to me) going on right now.
Twitch recently banned adult content. Meaning games with nudity and violence (like Hatred) are not allowed.
Not sure Gamers like that whole censorship thing. Ask yourself why GTA is the best selling game on Steam, while constantly being shit on by both the Social Justice Left and the Christian Right.
So how does Hacker News think that Twitch and YouTube Gaming are going to work with VR. Seeing the gamer and their reactions is part of the appeal of Twitch, but that changes with VR where you can't see someone's eyes.
Amazon (who paid nearly $1 billion for Twitch) and Google really believe there is a real future watching people play games, but one real challenge seems to be the VR integration.
Twitch doesn't make any money from streamer tips as most of that is done through a link to PayPal. Twitch has no tip system.
Popular streamers like Lirik have said they much prefer getting a subscription through Twitch than a donation as it's much more reliable. Some streamers like Summit1G probably does make way more money through tips because of their personality some people just throw money at them, but again none of that goes to Twitch.
I'm glad to see competition in the space, but I have to admit that I read this article as, "We at Google noticed that Twitch was gaining quite a bit of traction, so we decided to use our behemoth size to see if we could successfully copy them.".
I think Google might be starting to get scared. There are many threats to their search and web advertising hegemony, including Apple's announcement to include an ad blocker in iOS9. Google is quickly realizing that their long term survival might be in YouTube.
The problem i see is that Twitch already has a very strong culture in the gaming community. You see Twitch emotes being used everywhere on the internet and i started seeing people on my campus use it on everyday language.
I know its silly, but the chat and all the "underground" culture around it is a major player in Twitch's success.
First time I hear of Twitch, but I watch a lot of those play-through videos on Youtube (20 minutes of that crap saves me days of wasting money and time playing the actual game :-D)...
Its all about the money they are willing to invest.
If streamers with a viewership of 2-3k people on twitch can maintain/increase their income they will probably inclined to leave twitch.
And on the other side you need culture to make it work. Aliases instead of real names / emotes etc.
It will be a success the viewer base of yt in every demographic is to big but maybe not in the ballpark google wants it. Twitch will survive this and has to innovate which they dont really do atm.
So will the auto tag and transfer old videos with gaming content to the new site? Will uploading gameplay content on regular YT be prohibited than?
I would prefer if YT stay one entity and Google should just improve their "Search" on Youtube! It's weird that the search on Google in the video tab is a lot better than the search on Youtube directly. Youtube search functionality hasn't been improved since 2005 or so.
One thing that would be neat is if google rolled out their own streaming software. I've streamed a little on twitch for fun (mostly programming and some gaming) and I found all of it pretty bad.
Another neat thing is how much Replay value people's streams could get instantly being on youtube. I just checked twitch, and nobody really watches previously recorded streams. The most watched recorded videos this month in Gaming Talk Shows was only a little over 1000, while League of Legends most was in the 400s. Maybe youtube can really increase and monetize that for streamers.
I would also be super interested in streaming other things too, which is just now starting to get popular on twitch. I would love to be able to stream me programming and interact with other computer folk that way. I've done it on twitch but didn't stick with it long enough to really give it a chance.
I was previous streams all the time, since I'm usually available when my favorite streamer is. It's also kind of convenient because you can skip around to the good parts. The one thing I really hate missing is the chat though. I wish they'd save chat history and show it alongside saved streams.
I don't see it succeeding unless they get Riot Games to exclusively stream on YouTube. That amount of views League of Legends brings to Twitch is crazy.
I don't doubt that this will gain at least some traction. You can never count Google out. But it is somewhat disappointing to see Google, which used to pride itself on innovation, making dim copies of others' products long after the market has been invented and grown.
I hope they make official streaming clients to make the process much easier. I had issues with streaming Mac OS with both sound as well as microphone input.
Would also like to see a #GameDev channel. Was pretty cool to see Unreal show their stuff over Twitch.
[+] [-] robertcorey|10 years ago|reply
Previous Twitch competitor (Owned3D) was successful in gaining viewership by poaching streamers from twitch with better deals.It seems like it was pretty easy for personalities to transfer their fan bases over. Many twitch streamers already post highlights of their streams to youtube so they've already established a presence there. I would also think that youtube will be better at serving video advertisements and handling copyrighted materials on stream (currently twitch handles copyrighted music by muting archived videos that contain it, whereas youtube places an advertisement for the song at the bottom of the video).
[+] [-] nailer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ygra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaggarwal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bookwormAT|10 years ago|reply
The content is not subject to old copyright contracts, which is typically the argument not to launch something in Europe and its crazy copyright situation. And twitch is available everywhere.
If Google wants this to become a success, shouldn't they roll this out to as many people as possible and hope for network effects?
[+] [-] fla|10 years ago|reply
Ex: Youtube keeps suggesting me German videos even if all my accept-language headers and settings are set to en-US.(I'm in Switzerland, speak French). Also, you only see populars videos from your country. Wich makes no sense when the total population is less than Paris.
Seems like Google started segregating content by location and country language, it's sad and arbitrary.
[+] [-] DasIch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codewithcheese|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
At the very least: translation?
[+] [-] rjaco31|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mahn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cinbun8|10 years ago|reply
Streaming any game in real time and getting enough folks to watch it is still a problem that needs a solution with more polish. Twitch does not keep up and `Steam streaming` does not work half the time. I'd stream games on gaming.youtube.com if they did a better job at it and have a product focused around that.
I can foresee a future where youtube can get those eyeballs on `gaming.youtube.com` instead of twitch.tv. Youtube is already popular for gaming reviews.
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch.tv#Acquisition_by_Amazo...
[+] [-] Too|10 years ago|reply
You use your game client to connect to the same server that the actual game is playing on, only receive the small packets of player information and then render it locally.
This will of course eventually also overload the server with enough spectators but some kind of forwarding proxy should be able to solve this easily.
Voice commentary and a professional host choosing the best camera angle is still missing but this is also something that could be embedded into the game if the game developers really wanted to.
[+] [-] chrischen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalSea|10 years ago|reply
Curious why they're launching in the US and UK first though. Couldn't find anything that explained why the delayed release, surely it's not because of copyright reasons.
[+] [-] ken47|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batiudrami|10 years ago|reply
The problem they will face is not that gamers are loyal so much as for many people "live video game broadcast" is Twitch, so people are unlikely to notice live streams if they're elsewhere. This is solvable though - most streamers upload their VODs to YouTube anyway so they can easily notify users when a streamer is live.
[+] [-] robryan|10 years ago|reply
Fro a Dota perspective competition like MLG, Hitbox, DailyMotion and Azubu have gone down the path of getting exclusive events and a lot of the audience generally follows.
There is also the massive Chinese market which is generally siloed from the rest of the world.
One thing other sites struggle with is getting the same Chat experience that a lot of people like from Twitch for big events.
[+] [-] obstinate|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dylan16807|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seivan|10 years ago|reply
Not sure Gamers like that whole censorship thing. Ask yourself why GTA is the best selling game on Steam, while constantly being shit on by both the Social Justice Left and the Christian Right.
[+] [-] barney54|10 years ago|reply
Amazon (who paid nearly $1 billion for Twitch) and Google really believe there is a real future watching people play games, but one real challenge seems to be the VR integration.
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calebegg|10 years ago|reply
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6052077?hl=en
[+] [-] VieElm|10 years ago|reply
Popular streamers like Lirik have said they much prefer getting a subscription through Twitch than a donation as it's much more reliable. Some streamers like Summit1G probably does make way more money through tips because of their personality some people just throw money at them, but again none of that goes to Twitch.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mangeletti|10 years ago|reply
I think Google might be starting to get scared. There are many threats to their search and web advertising hegemony, including Apple's announcement to include an ad blocker in iOS9. Google is quickly realizing that their long term survival might be in YouTube.
[+] [-] revanx_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lynbarry|10 years ago|reply
It also allows me to have my 30 tabs open and watch a stream on the second monitor without troubling firefox.
[+] [-] pestaa|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sir_Cmpwn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craked5|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jotm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|10 years ago|reply
Namely no game footage allowed unless you pay as as much as we want because it's derived work.
I doubt there'd be Twitch or YouTube Gaming.
[+] [-] spdy|10 years ago|reply
And on the other side you need culture to make it work. Aliases instead of real names / emotes etc.
It will be a success the viewer base of yt in every demographic is to big but maybe not in the ballpark google wants it. Twitch will survive this and has to innovate which they dont really do atm.
[+] [-] frik|10 years ago|reply
I would prefer if YT stay one entity and Google should just improve their "Search" on Youtube! It's weird that the search on Google in the video tab is a lot better than the search on Youtube directly. Youtube search functionality hasn't been improved since 2005 or so.
[+] [-] ejcx|10 years ago|reply
Another neat thing is how much Replay value people's streams could get instantly being on youtube. I just checked twitch, and nobody really watches previously recorded streams. The most watched recorded videos this month in Gaming Talk Shows was only a little over 1000, while League of Legends most was in the 400s. Maybe youtube can really increase and monetize that for streamers.
I would also be super interested in streaming other things too, which is just now starting to get popular on twitch. I would love to be able to stream me programming and interact with other computer folk that way. I've done it on twitch but didn't stick with it long enough to really give it a chance.
[+] [-] legohead|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asillystory|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattryanharris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barney54|10 years ago|reply
This would be a good time to be a streamer with a lot of fans to get in a little bidding war between Amazon and Google.
[+] [-] forthefuture|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downandout|10 years ago|reply
I'll stick with Twitch.
[+] [-] seivan|10 years ago|reply
Would also like to see a #GameDev channel. Was pretty cool to see Unreal show their stuff over Twitch.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]