YouTube Gaming, the video network’s dedicated application for streaming and recorded game videos, and competitor to Amazon-owned Twitch, this morning announced an expansion into several more markets and a host of new features aimed at offering an improved browsing and viewing experience in its app. One of the changes will see the network more heavily promoting its “Live” game streams, which follows October’s launch of Mobile Capture – a feature that lets gamers directly stream from their Android devices.
YouTube is aware of their failures and will be putting an end to the YouTube Gaming app. Instead, the company will be bringing some of the features over to the main YouTube site and youtube.com/gaming.
The extent of Google’s current gaming reach is mostly limited to its YouTube Gaming streaming service and of course the Play Store with Android and Daydream VR games. However, the company might have a more direct interest in the space with the hire of gaming veteran Phil Harrison.
YouTube has clearly been the dominant force when it comes to internet videos over the last 12 years. In 2015, the platform decided to chase Amazon’s live streaming service, Twitch, by launching their own live streaming version of the site called YouTube Gaming. YouTube Gaming has been met with some very negative criticism since its launch. With incredibly long delays, Minimal emotes, channel moderation, and a very basic user interface. It seemed like YouTube Gaming was just not handled the way people expected it to be. With the incredible success of Twitch, it seems like YouTube Gaming was a poor competitor.
I think this is a case of too little, too late, but maybe they could pull through.
It looks just so unappealing to me and it's not even that visible on the main site.
Lack of popular streamers (due to low popularity of the YG) doesn't help either.