Remember the player your favorite team couldn’t purchase and ended up paying for it?
That is what happened to Google when Amazon snatched Twitch from underneath them. Twitch is the world’s most popular video platform for gamers. That title put their 2014 purchase price just short of one billion dollars.
The four year old company is the reason Youtube is not the lead video game streaming site.
And so if you cannot have them, you find a way to beat them.
Google will attempt to do so with the launch of Youtube Gaming this summer, a video site and app announced last week.
The announcement comes at a good time for Google. Youtube is currently streaming E3, the year’s biggest gaming conference. This gives the tech giant the chance to show off Youtube Gaming to the hardcore gamers at the conference while hosting the latest information, demos and interviews on their site.
Of course, Youtube already has a database of let’s plays, walkthroughs, cheats and music videos for gamers. But their streaming service is lacking.
To catch up to Twitch, Google will launch individual pages for over 25,000 games where users can post their best videos and host live streams. Gamers can add games to their collection to quickly check up on the latest videos. Subscribe to a channel and users receive updates on when live streams begins. Youtube also has a dedicated search for gaming. So, as Youtube claims, “typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe.”
There is no question as to why Google wants to invest in the gaming industry. Video platform sites like Twitch have grown alongside the increasingly prosperous world of E-Sports. Players are winning millions of dollars every year as others continue to argue the new industry’s category of “sport.”
But will Google be able to convert the hardcore gamer and bring them to a platform that grew famous outside of the gaming world?
Maybe.
For that to happen they will need exclusive content. That is where Google’s nearly unlimited resources should come in handy. But one thing is for sure, Youtube Gaming will have to convert the dedicated core and hardcore gamers, and be a better service than Twitch.