Skip to footer

Google announces YouTube Gaming. Will the app grab online gamers' attention?

This summer, YouTube will launch YouTube Gaming, a channel for gamers to stream and broadcast games and e-sports. Many see this as Google's direct attack on Twitch, a popular video game streaming service.

|
Youtube via AP
This photo provided by YouTube shows YouTube Gaming, a new product specifically aimed at gamers that YouTube is launching this summer. YouTube announced the new app and site on Friday ahead of the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

| Los Angeles

YouTube is seeking to win over gamers.

The online video giant announced plans ahead of next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo to launch a separate app and site specifically for fans of video games.

YouTube product manager Alan Joyce said in a statement Friday that YouTube Gaming will be a destination for users to find gaming videos, live streams and Internet personalities. The app and site will feature individual pages dedicated to more than 25,000 games.

Joyce noted that if a user began searching for the word "call" on the YouTube Gaming app, the military shooter "Call of Duty," not the Carly Rae Jepsen tune "Call Me Maybe" would appear first.

YouTube will also seek to make it easier for users to broadcast live and competitive gaming, known as e-sports, by creating singular links that can be shared and removing the need to schedule a broadcast.

"When I look at where YouTube is weaker in the gaming content space, I think live and e-sports," said Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's global head of gaming content, in an interview last month. "In the coming weeks, you're going to see us make improvements to our live product, and we do want to invest in e-sports from a content perspective. In some ways, it's still nascent, but there is something to say about the future of e-sports, and we definitely want to be part of it."

The move by Google-owned YouTube takes direct aim at Twitch, the gaming-centric streaming video site acquired by Amazon last year for nearly $1 billion. While YouTube remains the dominant online video site, Twitch has solidified itself over the past three years as a destination to stream gameplay from such titles as "League of Legends" and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive." Twitch now boasts 100 million users who watch 1.5 million broadcasters a month.

YouTube Gaming is scheduled to debut this summer in the U.S. and U.K. The app and site will be previewed at YouTube's booth on the E3 show floor beginning Tuesday.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Google announces YouTube Gaming. Will the app grab online gamers' attention?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0612/Google-announces-YouTube-Gaming.-Will-the-app-grab-online-gamers-attention
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe