14 DAY TRIAL // After plenty of rumors and a lot of speculation, Google confirms that its official Twitch competitor, called YouTube Gaming, will launch in the next few weeks and will offer a wide array of services to help users stream their games and then easily produce a video-on-demand version of that session for later viewing.
YouTube is a video giant and owner Google has already tried to enhance its capabilities in all sorts of ways, adding support for live streaming presentations and other such things.
However, the search giant wanted a piece of the gameplay streaming market and pledged to acquire Twitch for a huge sum of money recently. Unfortunately for Google's executives, retail giant Amazon swooped in and bought Twitch instantly.
YouTube Gaming is coming soon
Now, Google confirms on Twitter that it's going to launch a rival for Twitch, in the form of YouTube Gaming. As its name suggests, the new service takes advantage of YouTube's infrastructure and will offer dedicated hubs for all sorts of games.
As you can see in the image above, the example used is League of Legends, currently one of the most streamed games on Twitch. YouTube Gaming's hub for it will show general information, live streams, but also "Let's Play" videos that, presumably, are those that have been recorded and are available on demand.
The service is coming to different devices with special options
YouTube Gaming will be available on computers but also on smartphones or tablets, similarly to Twitch, but it promises 60fps playback and specific mechanics to help users discover more content that they might enjoy.
Expect to see some official details and information about YouTube Gaming in the near future, probably after E3 2015. YouTube itself will host a special hub of information from the large gaming expo, hosted by games industry veteran Geoff Keighley.
Until then, it's going to be quite interesting to see how Google will be able to compete with Twitch and Amazon in the near future.