Today, the Official Youtube Blog made the announcement that they will refocus their gaming efforts into a mega-brand: “Youtube Gaming”
The post reads:
As a kid, I spent hours on the living room couch playing video games with friends, taking turns trying to beat Ganon in “Ocarina of Time” and trading Pokémon until I had all 151. Soon controller passing and Game Boy link cables gave way to network multiplayer and PC LAN parties. Eventually, my living room became a virtual one, with a network of gamers sharing experiences and discoveries.
Today, the gaming world is much more diverse than the one I grew up with, and the community has created new formats that have made gaming more collaborative and interactive. On YouTube, gaming has spawned entirely new genres of videos, fromlet’s plays,walkthroughs, andspeedrunstocookingandmusic videos. Now, it’s our turn to return the favor with something built just for gamers.
This summer, we’ll launchYouTube Gaming, a brand new app and website to keep you connected to the games, players, and culture that matter to you, with videos, live streams, and the biggest community of gamers on the web—all in one place.
YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favorite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else. From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.
Live streams bring the gaming community closer together, so we’ve put them front-and-center on the YouTube Gaming homepage. And in the coming weeks, we’ll launch an improved live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube. On top of existing features likehigh frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time. We’re also creating single link you can share for all your streams.
YouTube Gaming will be available this summer, starting in the U.S. and U.K. We’re building this just for gamers—so we want to hear from you about how we can make it the best way to connect with your community. If you’re atE3next week, come by our booth for an early look at everything we’ve been working on. If not, tune in live from home atyoutube.com/e3, head over togaming.youtube.comand follow us@YouTubeGamingand you’ll be the first to know when YouTube Gaming is ready for you to play with.
