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YouTube has announced a new app and website dubbed YouTube Gaming, with the video streaming service apparently ready at last to take a more focused approach towards its abundant video game content creation community.
The website and app will be dedicated to Let’s Plays, livestreams, speedruns and other kinds of video game content. The service will allow users to subscribe to channels and be notified instantly of livestreams when they start. It’ll also make recommendations based on a user’s subscribed channels.
"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,” YouTube Gaming product manager Alan Joyce said.
"And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing ‘call’ will show you Call of Duty and not ‘Call Me Maybe.’"
In a related event at the company’s Los Angeles studio, YouTube global head of gaming partnerships Ryan Wyatt admitted that YouTube has "never really built gamers the experience they deserve.” Wyatt went on to discuss the growing importance of gaming for online video – especially livestreams.
"[YouTube Gaming has been] built from the ground up for gamers by gamers," promising that "no longer is gaming going to be lost in a sea of content,” Wyatt added.
A post on the official YouTube blog states the Twitch-like gaming portion of its network will launch in the US and UK later this summer.
