It was in 2015 when YouTube first tried live streaming called YouTube Gaming but to no avail. This was after Google attempted but failed to purchase Twitch, and as of the middle of this year, the project was closed due to confusion it brought to users. Broadcaster and E-sports consultant Rod Breslau described the deal pretty bad. He even added it could've been worse.
Breslau said in an interview with The Verge that "the failure knocked YouTube out of the race and it had been in with Twitch" to win the minds and hearts of the streaming aficionados, and it kept the firm from really creating a vigorous live-streaming community. However, the gaming expert said, "Its death was not the end."
Re-Entering the Gaming World
In previous months, the leader in video streaming has been positioning itself for one more crown race. Juiced by the looming entry of Google Statia, the firm's first venture in cloud gaming, YouTube has been in search of talent it can employ to attract a new audience to its platform. Considering its strong presence and popularity on the Internet, YouTube can definitely reshape live streaming in its image.
The fact that the leading video platform has been considered the most effective network for video distribution online, it is so possible for YouTube to succeed in this endeavor. But that is, according to most gaming experts, if the company learned its lessons from its last circumnavigation. So the big question here if YouTube will be able to make the most out of such an opportunity, remain.
In the previous month, YouTube cut deals with Lachlan Power and Jack "CouRage" Dunlop, who, between them, led around 3 million followers on Twitch. While surely, they were both handsomely compensated, Power and Dunlop are also to benefit from plugging themselves into the scale of YouTube.
Breslau also said that during the black hole event of Fortnite, there were around three times as many viewers "watching the hole on YouTube as there were on Twitch." YouTube, on the other hand, claimed, the stream alone of Power maxed out at 198,976 live concurrences, truly an astounding number. And, to put the numbers in perception: Tim "Timthetatman" Betar, one of Twitch's most-followed creators Twitch, drew in about 100,000.
The Point of Vertical Integration
Vertical integration is best explained by citing Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg as the best example. Earlier this year, PewDiePie announce he had just signed an exclusive streaming deal with a blockchain-fueled live-streaming platform, DLive. This platform does not have quite an impressive viewership in terms of size. However, he has more than 640,000 followers on DLive now, an impressive figure, but certainly incomparable to his audience on YouTube.
Indeed, on YouTube, PewDiePie is the most-followed developer with an enormous 102 million followers. If this creator ever streams on the popular video streaming platform, where all of his videos are regularly drawing in millions of visits, it is expected to break the Internet reputedly. Consequently, the point of this vertical integration is that YouTube, paying creators like PewDiePie millions for exclusive streaming on its site, is just Google buying the audience for Stadia, which neatly incorporates with YouTube in ways that entice streamers to utilize it.
