YouTube Gaming is here to take on live streaming powerhouse Twitch
Twitch, you’ve got some serious company. Almost exactly a year after the live game streaming pioneer was purchased by Amazon for $970 million, Google has unveiled YouTube Gaming.
The service can be accessed on the Web, through a new iOS app, or on Android. It’s currently available in the United States and United Kingdom. Other countries are promised soon.
YouTube talked more about the service in a blog post:
- YouTube Gaming is your go-to destination for anything and everything gaming because it automatically pulls in all gaming-related videos and live streams from YouTube.
- Viewers get personalized gaming recommendations based on the games and channels they collect. With over 25,000 game pages and even more gaming channels, it’s never been easier to connect with your gaming community.
- We’ve also made it easier to create a live stream — check out the beta version of our new way to go live at youtube.com/stream today.
While the live streaming section of YouTube Gaming obviously features mostly console games, there are a huge amount of videos regarding popular iOS titles as well.
Here’s a promo video about the service. Click here if you can’t see it.
YouTube Gaming is a universal app designed for the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad/iPad mini. It’s currently rolling out to the App Store and may not be available just yet. We’ll let you know when it officially arrives.
It should be interesting to see if YouTube Gaming can gain traction with gamers. I suspect it will take off pretty quickly since YouTube itself is a popular destination to view gaming videos already. Packaging live streaming and other gaming videos into one well-designed service should make Twitch just a little nervous.
For other app news today, see: The Pigmies are back in Pocket God vs Desert Ashes, Blast through alien enemies in Galak-Z: Variant Mobile, and Let the pros pick out awesome videos for you with Hyper.
