YouTube Gaming is preparing to launch today, further integrating one of the video-hosting website’s most popular features. YouTube Gaming will be focused on video games, supporting videos and live-streams. Search results will be more oriented toward gaming as the 25,000+ dedicated gaming channels speak to the wide appeal of the service.
The move makes sense, and is even perhaps overdue given how popular YouTube gaming personalities and their videos are. Last year, Google, which owns YouTube, tried to buyout Twitch, which has so far served as the premier service for streaming live gaming. Amazon wound up making the purchase for nearly $1 billion, but that hasn’t stopped Google from ultimately getting in on the streaming swell.
YouTube Gaming will allow viewers to personalize their viewing preferences to be tailored to specific games and gaming personalities, refining a process that often gets bogged down with all of the other videos on YouTube. Gamers themselves will also be able to livestream directly to YouTube. This will allow users to stream in the same place they upload their other videos. Viewers, as a result, may have options to keep track of their favorite personalities across multiple websites.
For myriad reasons, gaming has become one of the most popular genres of YouTube videos. With YouTube Gaming, Google is simply recognizing how mainstream video games have become.
