Since the announcement of YouTube Gaming in June, the YouTube Gaming community was a much anticipated addition to the community. Now, that wait is almost over.
Starting August 26, YouTube Gaming will officially launch as a brand new app and website to connect viewers with games, players, and the entire developing game culture.
Gamers have formed new genres of videos on YouTube like let’s plays, walkthroughs, speedruns, even cooking shows, and music videos. It’s a thriving community of interaction and collaboration between developers, players, and viewers.
In return, Google and YouTube decided to return the favor with their launch of YouTube Gaming. Promised features include:
- Over 25,000 pages exclusive to specific games
- Channels for both game publishers and Youtube creators
- Game videos & live streams
- “Collections” to access the latest game content and videos
- Subscribe to specific channels or users for their latest content
- A search system that shows game-related content only
However, there seems to be more to the website than what features were released. There are also reports from arstechnica, who went hands-on with a pre-release version in June, that there may also be a few unmentioned features:
- A DVR Mode for streamers to buffer the last 4 hours of their stream and enable rewind for viewers.
- Separate subscription systems for content creators and live gaming.
- Broadcasts to be made in HTML5
- A Recommendations feature for other channels and creators you might enjoy.
- Game pages have tabs to access current live streams, popular videos, let’s plays, and game reviews, among other options.
YouTube Gaming was built using Google’s new toolkit Polymer. To stay up to date you can get an email notification sent to you when the site launches by submitting your email to the YouTube Gaming front page. Until then, you can keep tabs for the launch by checking out @YouTubeGaming.
YouTube Gaming should be available at launch for any country with YouTube access. Apps will also be available for iOS and Android, but exclusively for the U.S. and U.K. at first and won’t be accessible worldwide until a later date.
