As soon as watching video games became popular, people started asking: is this helping or hurting the industry?
The logic as to why "Let's Play" videos or Twitch streams might hurt a game's overall performance is, at the very least, sound — after all, why would someone need to spend $60 on a game when someone on YouTube is just going to post the entire thing online? Not only that, but today's video game coverage is all-encompassing — it doesn't matter how tiny or obscure your video game is, someone is going to post their playthrough online.
However, it seems as if video game broadcasting isn't as harmful as people first thought — in fact, a new study shows that Twitch streaming can actually help boost a game's sales. In a post over on the site's official blog (via PC Gamer), Twitch Data Scientist Danny Hernandez released his findings on both game retention and sales boosts following broadcasts.
As it turns out, people watching someone play a game online tends to lead to an increase in purchases — and in some cases, these boosts can account for more than 20 percent of a game's sales.
At this point, the report seems to be nothing but good news. Gamers clearly love playing with other people, even if that's through a chat window — and from the looks of things, developers both big and small are seeing the benefits.
It'll be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this news. Twitch has already become a huge part of both how gamers play and how publishers market their games — some titles even come with Twitch chat integration built into the game itself. Now that there are some hard numbers to back up Twitch's claims, it's easy to assume that we'll be seeing even more live stream integration as gaming hardware continues to evolve.
For a full write-up on all of Hernandez's findings, head on over to the official Twitch blog.
