YouTube's Twitch competitor, YouTube Gaming is being shut down, the video streaming service announced in a blog post today. The YouTube Gaming site will redirect users to a new destination for gaming videos on YouTube itself while the YouTube Gaming app will be phased out by March 2019. The reason for this move is to ensure it reaches more gamers through YouTube rather than a specialised, standalone site and app. Existing features such as Super Chat and Channel Memberships will be carried over to the main YouTube experience. "We have a strong and vibrant audience on the YouTube Gaming app, but the amount of gamers we are able to reach is far bigger on YouTube," wrote YouTube's Director of Product Management, Christina Chen on the company's official blog. "After all, YouTube is where more than 200 million gamers come to engage with your favorite games and creators every day, watching over 50 billion hours of gaming content in the last 12 months alone. That’s why, in March 2019, we’ll retire the YouTube Gaming app and focus all of our gaming efforts on YouTube where we can reach our entire gaming community." During its India launch back in 2016, YouTube Gaming consumption trends in the country were skewed towards games on conventional formats like the PS4 and Xbox One. "In terms of overall YouTube consumption, Indian viewers are definitely mobile first, with 55 percent of overall watch time in India coming from mobile," said Ines Cha, Head of Gaming Content and Partnerships for YouTube Asia Pacific in conversation with Gadgets 360. "Within the gamer community we're still seeing console games dominate but as I mentioned, mobile games are gaining ascendance amongst casual gamers." Nonetheless, we wonder how popular YouTube Gaming actually is. According to Variety citing App Annie data, Twitch's Android app was the 15th most popular entertainment app on Google's Play Store while YouTube Gaming was at number 283. If you're a fan of video games, check out Transition, Gadgets 360's gaming podcast. You can listen to it via Apple Podcasts or RSS, or just listen to this week's episode by hitting the play button below.<doc-sep>YouTube Gaming, the specialised app and site dedicated to video game streaming and more, is being shut down by Google. All the features of YouTube Gaming will now be incorporated into regular YouTube, including livestreams, Super Chat and channel memberships. YouTube Gaming launched in 2015 as Google’s answer to Twitch, which had been bought out by Amazon in 2014. “We’re always working to make the gaming experience on YouTube better,” said the company in a statement provided to VG247. “Over the past few years we’ve focused on building tools and experiences that the gaming community has been asking for. “That’s why in 2015, we launched YouTube Gaming, a standalone app for gamers where we tested new features like Game Pages for better discoverability, Super Chat and Channel Memberships to help fans show support for their favorite creators, Dark Theme and even a new live streaming platform based on the gaming community’s feedback. “The response to these features has been so positive that we brought them over from the YouTube Gaming app to the main YouTube experience.” YouTube’s new gaming destination can be found at youtube.com/gaming.<doc-sep>YouTube will no longer maintain a separate app targeting gaming and live game streaming, the company announced today. The YouTube Gaming app, which first arrived in 2015, will be sunset sometime next spring as its host of features make their way over to YouTube’s main site. Over the years, the YouTube Gaming app has been a place where YouTube experimented with features catering to game creators and viewers who like to watch live and recorded esports. Here, it tested things like Game Pages to make games more discoverable, Super Chat, and Channel Memberships – features which the Amazon-owned game streaming site Twitch had also popularized among the game community. Some of YouTube Gaming’s features became so well-received that the company brought them to YouTube. For example, this June YouTube introduced channel memberships to its main site. And before that, it had brought Super Chat – a way for creators to make money from live streams – to its broader community, as well. But while gaming remains one of YouTube’s top verticals, no one was really using the standalone YouTube Gaming app, the company says. “We have 200 million people that are logged in, watching gaming content every single day,” Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s Director of Gaming Content and Partnerships, tells TechCrunch. “And the majority of them, quite frankly, are just not using the YouTube Gaming app for their gaming experiences,” he says. However, data from Sensor Tower shows the app had over 11 million installs across iOS and Android, and those installs have remained consistent over time. That indicates a large number of people were at least willing to try the app. But the firm also found that its daily users were a “tiny fraction” of Twitch’s on iOS, which confirms Wyatt’s point about lack of usage. Instead, gamers are logging into YouTube to watch gaming, Wyatt explains. They watch a lot of gaming, too – over the last twelve months, fans streamed more than 50 billion hours of gaming content, and YouTube has over 500,000 quarterly active live gaming streamers. In other words, YouTube’s decision to sunset the standalone app should not be seen as an admission that it’s ceding this space to Twitch – rather, that it’s now deciding to use the power of YouTube’s flagship app to better compete. On that front, the company is today launching a new YouTube Gaming destination at youtube.com/gaming. The destination is first available in the U.S., and will roll out globally in the months ahead. A link to the new vertical will appear in the left-side navigation bar, where you find other top-level sections like Trending and Subscriptions. The Gaming destination will feature personalized content at the top of the page, based on what you like to watch, along with top live games, the latest gaming videos from your subscriptions, and dedicated shelves for live streams and trending videos. Another feature, “gaming creator on the rise,” will highlight up-and-coming gaming creators who are still trying to build an audience. That’s something that many say is still an issue on Amazon-owned Twitch – often, their early days are spent streaming to no one. They soon find that they need the blessing of an existing influencer to bring more viewers to their channel. Wyatt points out, too, that YouTube Gaming won’t be all about live streams. “The other thing that we learned through this process was that the gaming app, and the narrative around it, was very heavily live-focused. Everybody always talked about all the live streaming and live gaming,” he says. “But what that did was underserve the vast gaming business. So by moving it over to YouTube main, you have this beautiful combination of both the living gaming streams that are continuing to grow massively on YouTube, as well as all the other VOD content on the platform.” There are several things that YouTube’s new Gaming destination still lacks, however. Most notably, the ability to live stream gameplay right from your phone. That’s why the YouTube Gaming app won’t immediately disappear. Instead, it will stick around until March or maybe even April 2019, while YouTube works on porting the experience over to its main site and app. “We’re still working through that,” Wyatt admits, when asked how the live streaming component will come to YouTube proper. “We haven’t made a decision on if [live game streaming] will be in there by March, but we do need to have a solution for easy mobile capture from the phone,” he says. The YouTube Gaming app was never a global release, as it was only live in select markets, we should note. YouTube’s Gaming vertical will eventually be launched worldwide. That could make it more of a challenge to Twitch, as it taps into the eyeballs of YouTube’s 1.8 billion users, while also expanding to take advantage of other new YouTube features like Premieres or Merchandise. “It’s a great opportunity to use those features,” Wyatt notes, regarding the shift from YouTube Gaming to YouTube proper. “And we’re going to keep creating more features that will that will really lend themselves to live, but ultimately we’ll be thinking about really unique ways to apply them to VOD as well,” he says.<doc-sep>
One of YouTube’s first standalone services was YouTube Gaming to capitalize on streaming games to a live audience. With the explosive rise of an Amazon-owned Twitch, Google is now integrating gaming into the main YouTube site and mobile apps. Launched in 2015, the standalone YouTube Gaming aimed to provide tools and provide an optimized experience for the gaming community. It debuted features like Game Pages for discoverability, Super Chat and Channel Memberships, Dark Theme, and a new live streaming platform. Over time, all these features were added to the primary app, most recently the Dark Theme on Android and Channel Memberships to help regular YouTubers better monetize content. Given the crossover, Google is now “launching a new Gaming destination to give gamers a home on YouTube.” In practice, there is a new youtube.com/gaming site with the older destination and mobile apps being killed on March 2019. Visually, it’s like the current YouTube homepage, but populated with gaming content. At the very top is a carousel of videos that are tuned to your watching preferences and highlights the personalized nature of YouTube Gaming. You’ll also see top live games and the latest gaming videos from your subscriptions, bringing the best of uploaded videos and live gaming to one destination. We’ve also built dedicated shelves for live streams and trending videos. Users are able to view content by game title, with a noticeable carousel of gaming cover art. These Game Pages — numbering in the tens of thousands — also appear on mobile and include popular videos, live streams, and other games from the same developer. Shelves for “Top live streams” and “Videos from your subscriptions” are below on the page. Meanwhile, Google is still trying to foster smaller creators and keep them on YouTube Gaming. “On The Rise” will “showcase a new up and coming gaming creator to help more fans discover their content.” It is launching in the U.S. and roll out to more countries in the future. Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: