Youtube Gaming HAPPENING PLACE

“It’s best to do one thing really, really well”. That’s one of the 10 rules Google itself swears by. Shrugging off a panglobal or pan-industrial view of any market, Google became masters of creating and catering to niche markets. They were happy to act as a platform that other businesses used to prosper on, because when they made money, Google made money as well.

But Twitch was a bit different. The live streaming video platform specialises in streaming video gaming content, an area of speciality that should have been covered by Youtube (which is owned by Google). Youtube Gaming is Google’s answer to Twitch, which was bought by Amazon in 2014.

Before Youtube Gaming, it was still possible to find video game streams amid other videos on Youtube, but it wasn’t that easy. You had to know exactly what you wanted and what keywords to use before you got the search results you wanted. With Youtube Gaming, however, search is much simpler and more focused on gaming.

Critical to the success of Youtube Gaming is users feeling they are part of a gaming community. The app delivers what it’s asked of in this front. Gamers have the option of interacting in real time with fellow gamers over live gaming streams, play-throughs or walkthroughs. Youtube Gaming features a wide variety of games belong to all kinds of genres and played by all kinds of gamers.

VERDICT: TWITCH HAS DEVELOPED A LOYAL FOLLOWING THAT STILL MAKES IT THE LEADING PLAYER IN THIS NASCENT SEGMENT OF VIDEO STREAMING. BUT YOUTUBE GAMING IS A GOOD START BY GOOGLE, CONSIDERING TWITCH HAS A 4-YEAR HEAD START. YOUTUBE GAMING IS GOOD, AND WILL BECOME BETTER.