The global gaming community is big, and it's getting bigger — currently a $91.5 billion market. That being said, it should come as no surprise that online video game streaming is big business as well.
According to YouTube analytics specialist Tubular, 15 percent of all uploads on the site are game-related (with Minecraft holding top top spot for most number of views, a whopping 62.7 billion).
Earlier this year, YouTube announced a series of updates to its streaming capabilities, the most notable of which is a shift to HTML5 playback (as opposed to the slowly-dying Flash). Not long after, the company announced the upcoming launch of its gaming arm — YouTube Gaming, built and organized specifically for the gaming community.
With over 25,000 titles, the project hopes to consolidate gaming news, reviews and live videos into a single, streamlined app and website. It boasts features like a high frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR and automatic conversion of streams into YouTube videos — all this in an attempt to make gaming culture a part of YouTube culture.
YouTube, however, isn't alone in this and hasn't entered a market devoid of competition. Earlier this summer, Twitch — the now-Amazon-owned video game content streaming app — also joined the ranks of companies ditching Flash to explore newer options with Javascript and HTML5.
While Twitch is still the leader in the game — accounting for over 43 percent of all live video streaming traffic by volume, miles ahead of ESPN and WWE — it remains to be seen how YouTube Gaming's launch will challenge this monopoly.
Although the launch is scheduled for later this summer, a test version of the Android app was leaked out this week.
