YouTube Gaming announced as Google's answer to Twitch
Google announced today YouTube Gaming, an app and website dedicated to the company's gaming content.
Thousands of games will be featured through dedicated pages, each with videos and livestreams included. Users will be able to veiw content through Games, Feed and Channels tabs.
In July last year, it was rumored Google was planning to hand over $1 billion to purchase Twitch. Amazon got it in the end for slightly less at $970 million, but Google was apparently still set on the idea of its own video gaming streaming hub.
Twitch doesn't seem to bothered by today's news, either.
"YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favorite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else," said YouTube Gaming product manager Alan Joyce. "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 go online or use the app to subscribe to channels, and sign up to be notified when a livestreams starts or when content has been uploaded.
New features will be made available for those who livestream, forgoing the need to schedule events prior to the stream.
A section titled My Games will allow users to tell the app which games they are most interesting in which will provide them with relevant recommendations.
There will also be a new Live system which will allow users to "hang out" with their favorite YouTube Creators, which will feature improved chat latency and moderation.
YouTube Gaming will launch this summer in the UK and US. You can click the link for more information, but the site seems to be overloaded at present, so just keep hitting refresh.
Via: YouTube Gaming Twitter, Polygon, Engadget.
